Website tanked – PHP and WordPress update to blame

My site was down because PHP didn’t like the new WordPress 3.2.1.

Long story short, if you get the dreaded “500 internal server error” after the WordPress 3.2.1 upgrade AND you are using 1&1 hosting, here’s what you need to do…

  1. Edit the php.ini file (or create a new one) to MEMORY=128MB (or just bump the number that is there up in increments of 64 MB)
  2. Edit the .htaccess file to force 1&1 to use PHP5 by adding “AddType x-mapp-php5 .php” (thanks TECHNOBLOG)
  3. Upload the changed files and you’re back.

A slight AAAAAAAAAAAAAA is just what I needed to wake me up this morning!