all links appear working but showing 500 internal errors to crawlers, ping etc HELP!!

Hi, firstly let me thank all the users who contribute and ask on this forum. Without you I would be completely lost and never have gotten to this stage.

Now for my problem, I have my site ready to go live. It all looks fine when browsing around, all links appear working. I noticed however that when submitting the link http://alphonic.co.uk to any directory or site I was getting an invalid url or server error message.

I decided to do a bit of research and I am getting told from ping sites and link validity check sites that all my internal urls from the home page are dead showing 500 errors.

see here: http://www.2bone.com/links/cgi-bin/2check.cgi?spider_url=http:%2F%2Falphonic.co.uk&start=11&o=f

I really do not know where to start with this problem but I assume it will ruin my SEO visibility or may exclude me from inclusion completely.

Please Please Please!! can someone help me with this. I assume its a script error somewhere??

Thanks so much, to all you generous experts out there.

Read through this first:

https://www.zen-cart.com/tutorials/index.php?article=63

You'll probably have to work with your host to get it fixed.

This may not be your problem at all...

Many of these "link checkers" are faulty. Some haven't been upgraded in decades and are simply not capable of analysing dynamic content sites.

When I follow the links from your site that 2bone calls "500 errors", I happily find myself at the designated page.

I ran THIS SITE through 2bone and got a "403 Forbidden" response... yet I know that our client features well on the WWW.

I got a 500 error on the main page when I tried to validate your site.

stevesh:

I got a 500 error on the main page when I tried to validate your site.

Ah... then there is clearly a more serious issue...

Perhaps an issue with the htaccess file? I'd try removing it and see if that solves the problem.

Hi thanks for the quick responses, I've had a look at the 500 error faq page. In my logs I got a lot of errors because the cache was pointed to a different folder because of a server switch I used the fix cache key tool here: http://www.zen-cart.com/index.php?main_page=product_contrib_info&cPath=40_54&products_id=82 and got rid of that problem

My host also suggested removing the .htaccess file from public_html but that did nothing to solve the problem from 2 link validation checkers.

I reuploaded the .htaccess as it has my url forwards in it.

I am really perplexed as to how all the sites are visible and able to run through on the site but are showing 500 errors to any servers trying to validate / view the site.

A real frustration and I thank your support on trying to help me. Any further ideas. I'm waiting on another reply from the host.

is there any chance it is a configure.php fault in using mydomain.com instead of https://www.mydomain.com for main server ?

I really am clueless with this stuff so just a guess.

Hi really sorry to bombard users with information on this post it's just really stressing me out!

This is the latest from the host (they have closed the support thread)

Hello Pete,

This is from our knowledge base regarding Internal Server Error (500):

There are many different possibilities why you can get internal Server Error. And in most cases it is due incorrect .htaccess file configuration.

Although this is generally caused by a problem within the script, many times it is caused by incorrect file permissions either on the script itself, or another file or directory used by the script. You should also verify the that the script paths are set correctly.

You should also verify that the scripts were uploaded in the correct mode (ASCII or Binary - check the readme for the scripts to see any special instructions. Normally it is ASCII). Another problem could be permissions of the file or directory. Your script permissions should be 755, or rwxr-xr-x.

How do I fix a '500 internal server error' on my website?

1. Interference with an .htaccess file.
   If you have implemented .htaccess on your site, it may be interfering with the web page you are trying to load into your browser. Please double check the .htaccess configurations to ensure that it doesn't contain any errors. To confirm whether an misconfiguration .htaccess is the cause of the 500 internal server error, either remove or rename the .htaccess file.

2. PHP Coding Timing Out
   If your PHP script makes external network connections, the connections may time out. If too many connections are attempted and time out, this will cause the internal server error. To prevent such time outs and errors, we suggest that your relevant php scripts be coded with some timeout rules.

3. Search on Google for your script name + internal server error. For example if you get this error on Wordpress blog - query Google for Wordpress internal server error Fix.

We greatly appreciate this opportunity to service you. We hope that all of your concerns have been addressed. Please feel free to reopen this ticket if you need any additional assistance.

I really feel this is a "we don't have a clue", good luck email.

If I were to back up my db and reinstall zen cart and the theme etc would this fix the problem??

Thanks for your continued support, I really appreciate this community's kindness.

Core zencart does not have .htaccess in the root of its installation (though many other sub-folders do have a.htaccess file).

Unless there is a really compelling reason for an .htaccess file at root level, you may be be off to a good start by removing it completely.

Have you looked at the server's error log? That's where 500 errors are reported in more detail.

If I were to back up my db and reinstall zen cart and the theme etc would this fix the problem??

You could do a fresh install of Zen in a sub-directory after creating a separate database for it. Then you could run winmerge to compare the files from the two installations. After solving the problem, simply delete the second install.

RescoCCC:

You could do a fresh install of Zen in a sub-directory after creating a separate database for it. Then you could run winmerge to compare the files from the two installations. After solving the problem, simply delete the second install.

Thanks I'm going to try this as it's needle in a haystack at the moment I've got over 1400 error logs so I cant look through all of them :shocking:

Start with the data contained in the most recent 20 files. What's the trend?
Gotta start someplace.

Hi I seem to have tracked the problem. Something is trying to write to my old server which I changed from a week or so ago.

[06-Nov-2011 12:57:23] PHP Warning: session_save_path() [<a href='function.session-save-path'>function.session-save-path</a>]: open_basedir restriction in effect. File(/home/a8474992/public_html/cache) is not within the allowed path(s): (/home/alphonic:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php:/tmp) in /home/alphonic/public_html/includes/functions/sessions.php on line 168

This message is pretty much constant a8474992 was old host username / database user name

If any light could be shed on how to fix this. I tried using the fix cache key tool from Drbyte but it said everything was okay.

I have also been on the sessions.php file but can't find any mention directly to the a8474992 user line 168 is just the sesion_save_path function

Thanks so much for your continued support!!

That path is found in possibly 3 places:

• admin /includes/configure.php
• /includes/configure.php
• Admin->Configuration->Sessions->Session Directory

(FYI - it's always good to include important pieces of information such as "recently switched servers", etc when posting :blush: )

Hi I had already checked both the configure files and they were fine. before you replied I had manually went through a search in phpmyadmin of "a8474992" to find the entry in the configuration field and edited it to alphonic instead of a8474992 for the path. Upon logging into the admin area and going through the configuration/sessions buttons the path shows /home/alphonic/public_html/cache

I am still however getting 500 server errors on the link check software which I have used on a clean install tonight which worked with that. Sorry for not mentioning the server move it seems silly now.

I will do another check between the current uploaded files and a clean install to see what problems may be causing this still. Any other ideas in the mean time as to something that could of went wrong with the server switch?

Are there any things in this move tutorial that you didn't do? https://www.zen-cart.com/tutorials/index.php?article=100

If you start with a brand new clean install, without customizations or your old data, does it still have the problem?
If so, then your hosting company really needs to get involved and dig out the details from the server's apache/mod_security/etc error logs.
If you then progressively add back your customizations, does it break?
And then if you add back your database, does it then suddenly break?

Someone mentioned this article already ... anything you've missed there? https://www.zen-cart.com/tutorials/index.php?article=63

What's different on your site vs a brand new fresh install?

Have you tried visiting your site while emulating a crawler? What happens?

Thank you so much DrByte for your continued support I cannot express my gratitude enough!

UPDATE. I have managed to rid of the 500 internal server error. The problem was with several files/settings the first was the previously discussed sessions data in the database which was set to the old host directory,

second was that I have a few snippets of redundant "simple google analytics" code in some of my files which was identified via winmerge,

third was that I had somehow accidentally transferred the admin/includes configure.php to both admin/includes and /includes

HOWEVER now that this problem is sorted all my product links are showing up 404 page errors to any link checker/crawler . BUT I can see them fine when clicking through the site itself.

Any idea why they are showing dead to link checkers / crawlers?

See here for latest report http://www.2bone.com/links/cgi-bin/2check.cgi?spider_url=http:%2F%2Falphonic.co.uk&start=11&o=f

Also I just tried a new test product to see if there were any negative effects of the steps I took to fix the 500 error but it creates and shows fine on the site. (did this in case existing products still showed but some back end error was making them seem broken to bots etc)

All links show active to crawlers except products which return 404s.

Are you saying that this crawler-detector is only reporting "old" products as 404-not-found, but newly-added products are normal "200-OK" ?