This page isn’t working: HTTP ERROR 500 joomla on the front end

Question

I have hosted my joomla website by uploading all my files to public_html, I have also changed the connections for host, user name, password and database name to the according. But when I run my front end, I see

This page isn’t working domain name is currently unable to handle this request. HTTP ERROR 500

Please help

Answer 1

I would like to add one more point in Neil Robertson is as below:

By doing point no 2 - (enabling error reporting) still the issue persist, Please check the public $gzip; variable in configuration file. It should be 0 as Joomla internally does the gzip compression.

Excuse my Grammar :( Novice in English.

Answer 2

Some things to try:

1. Using FTP or similar, temporarily rename .htaccess to .htaccess.old and copy htaccess.txt to .htaccess in the root folder of your website so you are using the default .htaccess file.

2. Using FTP or similar, edit your configuration.php file and set public $error_reporting = 'maximum'; to see if there are any more meaningful error messages.

3. Temporarily rename any php.ini files in the root folder of your website.

4. Repeat steps 1 and 3 in the /administration folder if the back end of the website is also affected.

5. In cPanel or similar, try switching PHP 7.x back to PHP 5.6 if applicable. You may have some extensions that are not ready for PHP 7 yet.

6. Clear the cache by manually deleting everything in the /cache folder. Also clear the cache in the hosting control panel, in your CDN e.g. CloudFlare and anywhere else if these options exist.

7. Create and upload a simple index.html page to see if the hosting is operational.

8. Create and upload a simple index.php page to see if php is working (temporarily rename the current index.php to index.old).

9. Check folder and file permissions. Folders should be 755 and files should be 644.

10. Try restoring a copy of the website to an alternative local or remote host to see if the problem is with the hosting or if the website is broken somehow.

11. Try accessing the website via a temporary url rather than the domain name to see if the issue is with the domain name. For example, some hosts allow you to access your website via the IP address and cPanel account name like this: http://123.123.123.123/~acctname

12. Disable third party extensions one by one by editing the xxx_extensions table using phpMyAdmin or similar until the site works again or until all third party extensions are disabled.

13. In PHP Selector in cPanel or similar, check that the relevant PHP modules are enabled. PHP 5.6 will look something like this:

14. Assuming nothing else works, assuming you have a current backup and assuming you haven't edited any of the core code, you could try uploading and expanding the full install package for your current version of Joomla e.g. Joomla_3.8.6-Stable-Full_Package.zip in the root folder of your website to overwrite any corrupt files. Once expanded, delete the install package and the /installation folder.

Hopefully one of these suggestions will help. Unfortunately there are many potential causes of "Error 500".