Receive HTTP 500 error after accessing wordpress page

I developed a wordpress website for our company. It has always worked perfectly but today I entered the URL in the browser but I only received the HTTP 500 error message. What can be the reason for this exception when there is nothing changed for months expect updates of the plugins and the theme?

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Submitted by Verena Zernpfennig on Sat, 11/17/2018 - 12:14
1 answer

First of all check for a corrupt .htaccess file on your FTP server. Rename the existing one and try to visit your site. If nothing changed the .htaccess is not the reason for the error. In my case the solution was to rename the folder "plugins" in the folder wp-content. Then try to access the website again if you see the text of your website of course without any graphical elements the reason for the error is a corrupted plugin. Now create a new folder "plugins" in the folder wp-content and move one plugin from the old plugins folder to the new created folder. After every movement try to reload the website if it is possible to see the content it wasn't the corrupted plugin. In my case an internal plugin of wordpress "wp_smtp_mail" was the reason for the error. Hope my solution helps! Good luck!

Submitted by Verena Zernpfennig on Sat, 11/17/2018 - 12:22

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Comments

The solution seems full and well described, because it offers multiple step-by-step ways to solve the problem. Good job on that!
If I had the same problem I would definitely love to have a one-sentence explanation what for example ".htaccess" is and why is it relevant to the solution.
Overall, good solution

 Boian Velitchkov - Sun, 12/02/2018 - 18:23 :::

This is a useful checklist-style solution for this problem. Thanks!

 Marian Berendes - Mon, 12/10/2018 - 10:10 :::

This is a really useful solution. Thanks a lot!

 Angelos Arampatzis - Mon, 12/10/2018 - 13:58 :::

Thanks for sharing!

 Kresimir Kasal - Mon, 12/16/2019 - 04:34 :::