500 error codes caused by W3 Total Cache plugin?
-
Hello Everyone,
I operate a site (http://www.nationalbankruptcyforum.com) that has been receiving 500 error codes in Webmaster Tools as of late. This morning, webmaster tools showed 129 500 crawling errors. I've included one of the URLs that contained an error message here: http://www.nationalbankruptcyforum.com/marriage-and-bankruptcy/do-my-wife-and-i-both-have-to-file-for-bankruptcy/
I've been getting these errors now for about 3 weeks and they've mostly been on obscure, strange URLs (lots of numbers etc.) however, this morning they started showing up on pages that will actually be trafficked by users. I'm really not sure where they're coming from, although I do believe it's a software issue as I've had my hosting company take a look to no avail.
I have had some development work done recently and am running the W3 Total Cache plugin (my site is built on WP). I also run the Yoast SEO plugin and rely on it to publish an XML sitemap among other things.
Anyone have any idea where these 500 errors originate from?
Thanks,
John
-
Dan, thanks for taking the time to look into this, I've sent your answer along to my developer, I'll update the thread if we find something that could help out other readers.
-
Hi John
I've checked this out a few times today, and tossed it around with a few other Moz people.
When I crawled the site earlier today with Screaming Frog, I got all the 500 errors you describe on the "normal" pages.
Now when I crawl the site I only get the "weird" pages with the unusual URLs.
We don't think this has to do with either Yoast of W3 Total Cache causing any of it. As far as what caused 500's on the "normal" pages, its hard to tell now. They loaded fine in my browser when I checked earlier.
But I strongly suspect maybe something going wrong in .htaccess for those stranger URLs.
Not sure why those URLs exist like that in the first place - they should all be "clean" whenever possible with the question marks etc in them. That'd be the first place I'd get straightened out. Check permalink settings or maybe a theme setting? Or did someone do something custom to the .htaccess file?
Get your URLs operating correctly. Then if the 500s still exist, you know its a different matter but at least you've narrowed it down and correct the URLs.
Hope this helps!
-Dan
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Micro Data Schema Error - How to solve?
For my Ecommerce site suddenly following errors occurred while I test my homepage in structured data testing tools - Error - image- A value for the image field is required. Name - A value for the image field is required. On right side of tool it's show me - Warning - address - The address field is recommended. Please provide a value if available. pricerange - The priceRange field is recommended. Please provide a value if available. telephone - The telephone field is recommended. Please provide a value if available. On right side of tool it's show me - Please let me know how to solve this errors and warnings? I have implemented schema via micro data. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | adamjack0 -
Increase in Crawl Errors
I had a problem with a lot of crawl errors (on Google Search Console) a while back, due to the removal of a shopping cart. I thought I'd dealt with this & Google seemed to agree (see attached pic), but now they're all back with a vengeance! The crawl errors are all the old shop pages that I thought I'd made clear weren't there anymore. The sitemaps (using Yoast on Wordpress to generate these) all updated 16 Aug but the increase didn't happen till 18-20. How do I make it clear to Google that these pages are gone forever? Screen-Shot-2016-08-22-at-10.19.05.png
Technical SEO | | abisti20 -
Why does my Google Web Cache Redirects to My Homepage?
Why does my Google Webcache appears in a short period of time and then automatically redirects to my homepage? Is there something wrong with my robots.txt? The only files that I have blocked is below: User-agent: * Disallow: /bin/ Disallow: /common/ Disallow: /css/ Disallow: /download/ Disallow: /images/ Disallow: /medias/ Disallow: /ClientInfo.aspx Disallow: /*affiliateId* Disallow: /*referral*
Technical SEO | | Francis.Magos0 -
Product Code Error in Volusion
I started working with about 800+ 404 errors in September after we migrated our site to Volusion 13. There is a recurring 404 error that I can't trace inside of our source code or in our Sitemap. I don't know what is causing this error so I have no way of knowing how to fix it. Tech support at Volusion has been less than helpful so any feed back would be appreciated. | http://www.apelectric.com/Generac-6438-Guardian-Series-11kW-p/{1} | The error is seemingly starting with the product code. The addendum at the end of the URL "p/" should be followed by the product code. In this example, 6438. Instead, the code is being automatically populated with %7B1%7D Has anyone else this issue with Volusion or does this look familiar across any other platform?
Technical SEO | | MonicaOConnor0 -
Redirect Error
Hello, I was sent a report from a colleague containing redirect errors: The link to "http://www.xxxx.com/old-page/" has resulted in HTTP redirection to "http://www.xxxx.com/new-page".Search engines can only pass page rankings and other relevant data through a single redirection hop. Using unnecessary redirects can have a negative impact on page ranking. Our site is host on Microsoft Servers (IIS). I'm not sure what is causing these errors. Would it be the way the redirect was implemented.
Technical SEO | | 3mobileIreland0 -
Error on Magento database 301 bulk update
Hi all, One of my client has a magento website and I recently received received 404 errors for about 600 links on GWT and I tried to give 301 redirection via bulk upload but i get errors. It's magento 1.7 and I have following columns on csv file. I included first sample row as well. <colgroup><col width="120"><col width="71"><col width="120"><col width="402"><col width="253"><col width="120"><col width="120"><col width="120"><col width="120"><col width="120"></colgroup>
Technical SEO | | sedamiran
| url_rewrite_id | store_id | id_path | request_path | target_path | is_system | options | description | category_id | product_id |
| 125463 | 1 | 22342342_54335 | old_link | new_link | 0 | RP | NULL | NULL | NULL | | | | | | | | | | | | The error msg I receive is below. I was wondering if anyone has tried this before and if you know you how to fix this. Manual redirection works fine but probably this first 600 error is just a start, I'll be getting more 404 errors soon, somehow i need to figure out how to fix this. I appreciate if any one has experience on this and guide me through. Thanks in advance, Here is the error: SQL query: INSERT INTO 'mgn_core_url_rewrite'
VALUES ( 'url_rewrite_id', 'store_id', 'id_path', 'request_path', 'target_path', 'is_system', 'options', 'description', 'category_id', 'product_id' )MySQL said: #1452 - Cannot add or update a child row: a foreign key constraint fails ('ayb_mgn2'.'mgn_core_url_rewrite', CONSTRAINT 'FK_101C92B9EEB71CACE176D24D46653EBA' FOREIGN KEY ('category_id') REFERENCES 'mgn_catalog_category_entity' ('entity_id') ON DELETE CASCADE ON) <colgroup><col width="120"><col width="71"><col width="120"><col width="402"><col width="253"><col width="120"><col width="120"><col width="120"><col width="120"><col width="120"></colgroup>
| | | | | | | | | | |1 -
GWT Error for RSS Feed
Hello there! I have a new RSS feed that I submitted to GWT. The feed validates no problemo on http://validator.w3.org/feed/ and also when I test the feed in GWT it comes back aok, finds all the content with "No errors found". I recently got a issue with GWT not being able to read the rss feed, error on line 697 "We were unable to read your Sitemap. It may contain an entry we are unable to recognize. Please validate your Sitemap before resubmitting." I am assuming this is an intermittent issue, possibly we had a server issue on the site last night etc. I am checking with my developer this morning. Wanted to see if anyone else had this issue, if it resolved itself, etc. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | CleverPhD0 -
Do You Have To Have Access to Website Code to Use Open Graph
I am not a website programmer and all of our websites are in Wordpress. I never change the coding on the backend. Is this a necessity if one wants to use Open Graph?
Technical SEO | | dahnyogaworks0