Newbie: 500 Internal error after uploading, can't install

Hi, Please help me to resolve my issue:

Web Server:
• PHP version 4.4.4
• Apache/1.3.37
• unix
Database:
• MySQL v4.1.21-standard
MODx:
• Version 0.9.6
Browser/Client:
• Safari 3.0, Firefox 2.0.0.4.
• Mac OS X 10.4.9

I Just uploaded files to the server, changed permissions as recommended, but when I pointed to ’install’ directory, server gives me following error:

Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, [email protected] and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.


Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

Apache/1.3.37 Server at baby.speednoc.com Port 80

Please help me to resolve this problem.

Did you by chance rename the ht.access to .htacess? If you host doesn’t allow for certain parameters for overrides in Apache from .htaccess files this will cause 500 errors.

If not, I would suggest that you post more information about your install. Who is your host? Did you check your host’s server to see if it met all the minimum requirements for loaded modules?

On my own server I can’t override certain parameters in the .htacess file but have to place directives for PHP in my php.ini file such as turning on compression and turning of mod_security. If, for instance, if I try to turn on Zlib Compression in the .htaccess file I will get a 500 error.

Thank for your input, I have tried to use .htaccess, but without any success, the hosting is http://www.hostm.com, and I starting to guess that I made a wrong choose, they sending me to modx and very slow with tickets... I need to determine, where the issue, or it’s on hosting part or I doing something wrong.

I could be wrong but I think that your host is a reseller and not an actual server owner. Another clue is that nowhere on their site is their a telephone number. I looked up their DNS IP Addresses and they are owned by internet wholesale companies. I guess you get what you pay for.

There are lots of hosts out there who charge 7.95/month and have 24/7 Telephone Support. Sometimes it is faster to get help with the person who can fix the problem. When you submit tickets there is no promise that they will fix the problem just a promise to respond and often when you are talking to a person it may make the issue more easy to fix without 20 submissions to the "Help"Desk.

My inclination is for you to delete and re-upload the MODx files. Create a new Db with PHPmyadmin and see if you can install. There really should be no reason to get a 500 error just to load an index.php file.

If you could list the URL to the location of your install that might be helpful.

Thanks for the help, here the link: http://baby.speednoc.com/~hotsnowf/install/index.php

My inclination is for you to delete and re-upload the MODx files. Create a new Db with PHPmyadmin and see if you can install. There really should be no reason to get a 500 error just to load an index.php file.

I have tried several times. 
P.S. Can you suggest a good hosting company?

Is http://baby.speednoc.com/~hotsnowf/install/index.php your own directory or some directory on your host’s server. The reason I ask is that if baby.speednoc.com is a subdirectory on your server, it doesn’t seem to be working correctly. That being said in CPanel (your hosting control panel) it is often you who sets up the subdomain i.e., baby. What happens when you go to the root directory of your domain name i.e. www.yourdomain.com/ and not via the subdomain or the tilde subdirectory? Do you even have a domain name for the site.

If you are looking for hosts in the U.S. I only know that people I respect recommend Dreamhost (I have heard issues with downtime and account security recently) If you don’t care where your host is, I would recommend Blacksun.ca based in Saskatchewan they have very stable systems and redundent connections and power. I have a number of clients including a high profile client and they have never been down for more than an hour and that was as a result of being the center of an international media frenzy. There are other resources out there for finding a good host. I personally buy and resell hosting for my clients from Hostdime and have been happy with them but they are not for mission critical sites. They do however have 24hour telephone or email support and usually have little downtime. They seem to only be on two networks and have occasional issues with congestion or bandwidth choking on shared servers. But the way I feel about it is that if my site is down for 20 minutes or so a month I will be okay. If my clients have a critical site that needs to be available 24/7 I go with Blacksun. One not to go with period is Netfirms. Slow, bad service, people who don’t understand service at all.

I hope this helps some.

Yes, it’s a temporary address, since the real domain is being transferred, it has to be started on Friday, but still doesn’t work (BTW I cancelled this hosting account on the last night) Maybe this is a cause of the problem, but I do believe the personnel of the hosting provider would be more professional to assist me to rise site before the domain transfer (that in this case lasts amazingly long- they claimed it will be about 24-48 h). Anyway, I don’t want to hear about them anymore. Thank you for hosting suggestions, I heard already about Dreamhost, and people tell very different things, this hosting is wery well known over the net, though.

[SOLVED] I have changed hosting to Steadfast networks, and installed MODx without problem, just one thing- before the install I have created an empty database for MODx, and during installation happened that I sat empty table prefixes, does it cause troubles in future?

I like this CMS, but struggling to get the blog done, unfortunately the documentation is very poor.

Hotsnow

Glad to hear all us up and running. Not that I have done it but setting up a blog is one of the most well documented parts of MODx using Ditto, Jot and NewsPublisher/NewsManager you can build a fairly quick blog. Just ask in the forums and you will get help don’t miss the Wiki and the Documentation on setting up a blog.

My understanding is that you make a page for each article and use Ditto to display things like a running descending article page either on a /blog or on your index. Jot enables you to include comments and NewsPublisher/NewsManager let you publish new articles from the Front end.

Hope it all works out.

Cheers,

Jay

Thank you for your help, indeed,

I have tried the tutorial on MODx site, but had grave troubles to find some snippets there listed, it’s seems that this tutorial is deprecated a little, then I turned to this one : http://wiki.modxcms.com/index.php/Basic_Blog, Everything is okay except the INPUT_BLOG page, it simply doesn’t work at all. Tell me please, these numbers in document tree, are they document ID’s?