HTTP 500 server errors on WordPress

This last week we launched a site and were moving it from our development server to the live server. The site was built using WordPress and even though we had done everything correctly the site still would still not display pages from the WordPress database.

We were having HTTP 500 server errors and there was seemingly nothing that could fix it. The solution to this turned out to be crazy simple and this could save you a lot of chasing around. Here’s how to fix it.

For some reason when you use custom permalinks like /%postname%/ it throws the server off when you move or restore the database. All you need to do to correct the problem is to set the permalinks back to their default state and save the settings. Once you do that test the pages to make sure they are working. Once you confirm that it is connecting you can switch right back to the custom permalink structure.

It’s a weird little bug with a simple fix.