If you update PHP on your WordPress website’s server and you get this error (below) then you need to follow this post to resolve the issue and get your website back up and running.
What is the WordPress HTTP 500 ERROR
This error can actually mean a lot of different things but essentially the server is failing to serve the website. To dig into the specific issue we need to use error logging.
It is common to see the ‘This page isn’t working’ error after updating PHP if the server is not set up correctly to run PHP 7.4 and above. To rectify this issue, we will need to make some tweaks to the server settings.
The first thing you can do to confirm this is the issue is to enable errors in your website’s wp-config file. Then when you reload the page, you will see something like this. You can see that the memory allocation is exhausted, so we need to increase the memory limit on the server.
To resolve this issue, you will need to go into your server settings panel, in this example, we are using CPanel. The options are found under the ‘Select PHP Version’ menu in the ‘Options’ tab. You should be able to find similar settings in Plesk or your managed server panel.
From here, you can increase the memory limit and this will resolve our issue. I would suggest you increase it to 192mb or more.
Once you have made these updates if your website is back up and running you can switch off your error logging in your wp-config file if you enabled it in the earlier steps.
Still having website issues?
It’s possible that you may also have outdated theme and/or plugin files which will need to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. If you are still having issues with your website and need WordPress support, you can use the form below to get in contact.
