Error 500 When Adding Event

[Daniel Veaner]

A couple of our users have received “Error 500 – Internal Server Error” when entering events. I have tried duplicating the problem by logging out of WordPress, then duplicating their entry in the Add Event screen, using the exact text and settings they entered. (WordPress and Events Calendar versions below.) I am not able to duplicate the error, but two users have reported it in the past two days.

I have my site set up so that anybody can enter an event, but it must be moderated before it goes live. In each case I have checked the “Pending” events and they were saved before the system error was thrown.

I have checked my apache logs, and the server has not been down. I also checked the raw log for this site, and was able to find the 500 errors. Here is an example (I redacted the IP address, but I confirmed it was the IP of one of the users that reported this issue). It shows that the issue is with Community Events:

####.###.###.### – – [15/Jul/2016:11:46:13 -0400] “POST /events/community/add HTTP/1.1” 500 289 “http://www.ithacalendar.com/events/community/add” “Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_10_5) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/51.0.2704.103 Safari/537.36”

I noticed in the log entry that this site user had used Google Chrome on a Mac, so I tried re-entering the event again on Chrome (on a mac) — it did not throw the error for me.

In a nutshell: I am not able to duplicate the error, but two users have reported it. The server was up and running at the time. The only thing new is that I believe there was an update to Events Calendar a few days ago (but not to Community, if memory serves me — (but don’t trust my memory!).

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Dan

Versions:
WordPress 4.5.3
Events Calendar PRO 4.2.2.1
The Events Calendar 4.2.2
The Events Calendar: Community Events 4.2.2

[Cliff]

Hi. Sorry you’re experiencing this, and thanks for your system information.

I see you don’t have very many plugins installed and all your Modern Tribe plugins look to be up-to-date. However, I noticed a couple of the plugins you have activated are pretty old. For example, The Permalinker hasn’t been updated in 4 years, and Speedy Page Redirect hasn’t been updated in 3 years (I didn’t check all your plugins’ ages).

You might want to follow our Testing for Conflicts Guide and see if that helps narrow down the cause of this.

You might also want to increase the memory limit on your current server.

Here are some helpful links regarding this:

• Here’s is how to upgrade WordPress’ memory limit, right from the WP Codex.
• Here is the PHP reference for modifying your php.ini memory limit. Sometimes this is necessary as well. Not all hosting plans allow you to edit the php.ini file, so you would need to consult with your provider on how to do it and if you need to switch plans. You might even ask them what the maximum allowed memory is for the current plan, and make sure you are already there.

Keep in mind that WordPress is a powerful application, and our Calendar only adds to that power.

Let us know what you find out.

Thanks.

[Daniel Veaner]

I have doubled the memory_limit, though it was pretty high to start with. It was 512M — the new setting is 1024M. I think that is really high for WordPress, isn’t it?

I am fairly confident it is not a plugin conflict. As you said, this site is relatively plugin light, and I have not added new plugins in some time. I did try the guide suggestions, but since I can’t duplicate the problem I don’t have a way to know if that is the problem. I think it is not, though, because there hasn’t been a problem up until now.

I wish I could duplicate the problem myself — that would make it much easier to trace. I guess the only thing I can do is monitor it with the higher memory setting, see if anyone else reports the problem.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 9 months ago by Daniel Veaner.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 9 months ago by Daniel Veaner.

[Cliff]

Yes, 512M is very high. 1024M is more so… It may not be taking effect though. It depends on your hosting environment.

If increasing the memory seems to solve the problem, you likely have a memory leak / runaway process causing issues and you’d likely see errors throughout your site, not just on our plugin’s pages.

And, yes, in order for us to fix a bug, we’d need to be able to recreate it as well.

I’d suggest discussing the issue with your host after some time with your new memory limit to see if you notice anything different.

Please note that threads get Closed automatically after 2 weeks of inactivity. If it does get Closed, please open a new thread, adding your current problem description and also linking back to this thread.

Thank you!

[Daniel Veaner]

Cliff, I understand. The site is actually on a VPS with some other sites we own. It has been pretty stable. I have root and WHM access, so I know we’re not dealing with a memory leak issue.

So I guess I’ll just keep my eyes open and see if I can learn more.

Thanks,

Dan

[Cliff]

Sounds good. Thanks.

[Support Droid]

This topic has not been active for quite some time and will now be closed.

If you still need assistance please simply open a new topic (linking to this one if necessary)
and one of the team will be only too happy to help.

[Author]

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