Yesterday a Magento shop owner contacted me because his shop was returning a “500 Server Error” page. Their web designer was at a loss to figure out what was going on, so the owner turned to me.

One of the main reasons for this error are file/directory permissions errors, often encountered when installing or upgrading Magento. A quick check revealed that this wasn’t the issue.

Taking a look at the configuration, I noticed that logging was turned on. So I looked at the log files, & exception.log was over 2.5 gb in size. Just turning logging off was enough to remove the server error. So, it seems Magento couldn’t write to the file any longer because of its sheer size.

So there’s something to look out for if you encounter an puzzling 500 error. Quite why the exception file was so big is another question!

If you’re looking for a midlands magento specialist, why not get in touch?