WordPress MU

I've completed installation of the software and I'm receiving an "500 Internal Server Error". I did a search of the MUWP forums and didn't see a lot.

Does anyone have any idea where to start to look to see why I'm getting the error?

Also, Apache is installed as a module in my cgi-bin directory for some strange reason by Hostway.com it might have something to do with it...

Thanks!

if I remember correctly it's caused by htaccess. try using itdamagers htaccess instead of the one that comes with wpmu.

you can get it here

We lost about four months of forum posts so a lot of information is gone.

I did both and had no success.

To add, I don't have virtual hosts enabled. My hosting provider will not enable me to do this.

alrighty then ;)

see if this post helps:

Topic #44

There are about five reasons you can be getting the 500 error so hang in there. :)

Well, I gave the link a look and I guess I should have probably said that I'm trying to run it on a linux server! :)

Oops, sorry it's a bit late here and I guess I overlooked that.

Hmm, the only other thing that I can think of is to maybe check the file permissions. Unfortunatly there really aren't many people around here that can help with the non-vhost setup because very few people use it. I personally haven't done a non-vhost install since maybe last august. In fact if the non-vhost setup is quite buggy and actually needs to be removed unless it's fixed. :(

Any dedicated server companies that you'd suggest looking into that offer vhosts? I'm not very happy with Hostway.com for a variety of reasons.

wait, you're telling me that you have a dedicated server with hostway.com and they are unwilling to setup a wildcard dns entry? If that's the case then something is wrong. It takes literaly about 90 seconds to setup a wildcard dns entry.

Do you have access to your Apache configuration files? I've experienced 500 errors that were fixed by using the following line under the directory section:

AllowOverride All


So you may have something that looks like this in the Apache config file:

<Directory /var/www/yoursite/htdocs>
Order Deny,Allow
Allow from all
AllowOverride All
Options -Indexes FollowSymLinks
</Directory>


Sometimes the default is to have AllowOverride set to None.

Another reason is that the rewrite module is not loaded in Apache. If it's not loaded, you can step through the installation wizard but then get the 500 errors while trying to access your blog.

Check your /etc/apache2/mods-enabled directory and make sure the "rewrite.load" appears there. If not, run "a2enmod rewrite" and then "/etc/init.d/apache2 force-reload" to reload apache.

By the way - this is how to do it on Debian, if you're not using Debian it's probably a bit different but the principals should be the same.

Cheers - Stuart

Thanks, I forwarded that to support at hostway to see if I even have the ability to do that.

I'll let you know in a few hours.

Almost 24 hours later and Hostway tech support still doesn't have an answer for me.

Can anyone suggest a reasonable host on which to install WPMU? Thanks.

A lot of people use dreamhost.

I know it's off-topic but:

Do you think WPMU will run on a standard web hosting account for a couple hundred blogs or is a dedicated highly recommended?

A shared hosting account will be just fine for a several hundred blogs. In fact I wouldn't go dedicated untill you have around 5,000 or so because you can bank on the fact that most users won't use all of their aloted space, etc. Mainly you just have to watch how much space and bandwidth you are using and decide when it's time.

Thanks my friend. I'll look into it! Hostway's been a headache so perhaps it's time to move on to greener pastures.

Anytime. You migth also want to check out Real Hosts. It's a small hosting company but they are willing to create custom plans and the service is excellent. I've used them for a few years and whenever something goes wrong I just email the owner directly.

The host I use, kwikhosting.com, allow vhosts and everything, and the people there are quite helpful too :)