Getting an Elementor 500 Internal Server Error won’t allow you to use the Elementor Publish / Update button anymore. Which is totally annoying because you won’t be able to save your WordPress pages! In this post, I’ll try to explain why you keep getting the 500 internal server error and I show you what I did to fix the Elementor 500 Internal Server Error on my WordPress site on localhost.
Why am I getting an internal server error? 😖
Are you building your artist site with WordPress? Then you might have also happened to get a 500 Internal Server Error in WordPress. If so, you know how annoying it is when you’re not able to save your documents anymore!
I’ve been developing my WordPress site on localhost, which means on my local computer and not on a live server.
Things were going fine pretty much all the time, but then I noticed that the Elementor sidebar was taking longer and longer to load. Sometimes I had to refresh the page a couple of times before the Elementor sidebar would be loaded and ready to use. Quite time-consuming and nerve-racking!
But hey, I could still deal, my post content didn’t get lost, so I didn’t bother to research more into it.
After a while, the Elementor Publish / Update button did not work anymore… or let’s say, it didn’t work smoothly anymore, first of all.
When clicking the Publish or Update button, I would get an Elementor 500 Internal Server Error. I often had to click the Update button a number of times, before Elementor would save the changes on the page.
And one day, as to be expected, the Elementor 500 Internal Server Error persisted… I wasn’t able to get rid of it anymore and to save my hard-earned post content! Huh.
I don’t like techie stuff too much, and in particular I don’t like techie stuff that isn’t working. But in this case, there was no way out. I had to do some research to find out why I kept getting the Elementor 500 Internal Server Error…
But first of all, the good news!
Don't worry your Changes are not lost, you can still save them!
If you’ve put a lot of work into your post, wrote up lots of text and created some nice design, the last thing you want is lose all your hard work. But don’t worry, your changes are not lost, you can still save everything in your post by clicking Save Draft.
To do so, click on the little up arrow next to the Elementor Publish or Update button and select Save Draft.
When you then close and reload the page, your changes should still be there.
why do i keep getting the 500 internal server error?
From what I found out, the Elementor 500 Internal Server Error can happen due to several major reasons.
The first one being a lack of memory, the second a corrupted .htaccess file, and the third reason can be defective plugins or different plugins not playing well together.
how do I fix the 500 internal error in WordPress on localhost?
As I mentioned at the beginning, I’ve been developing my WordPress on my local computer installation (so-called localhost), using MAMP to simulate the server environment.
In retrospect, I can say that the issue was due to an insufficient memory limit. My post had reached 5000+ words, I’ve used lost of Elementor widgets to give it a nice design, so there was obviously not enough memory available to save it (and to load the Elementor sidebar properly at all times).
→ Is Elementor Easy To Use? – Elementor Tutorial For Beginners
Adding Code To Your .htaccess File
This is what worked for me.
You can try adding a certain set of code strings to your .htaccess file to increase the WordPress memory limit. When working with a local WordPress installation, you’ll find the .htaccess file within the htdocs folder of your local server installation (MAMP, XAMPP, Bitnami, etc.).
On a Mac, go to the Applications folder, locate the MAMP folder (or other server program) and click to open. You will see the htdocs folder in there. The htdocs folder contains another folder with the name of your WordPress installation. If you have only one WordPress site set up, the folder will most likely be named wordpress by default.
Locate the .htaccess file in your wordpress folder, and right-click on it. You can open the file with any ordinary text editor. I’m using the Sublime Text editor.
In the next step, simply paste a set of strings right below the regular content of your .htaccess file to increase your WordPress memory limit and other variables.
This is the code that I added to the end of my .htaccess file:
php_value memory_limit 256M
php_value post_max_size 256M
php_value max_execution_time 180
php_value upload_max_filesize 256M
php_value max_input_time 600
php_value max_input_vars 5000
Fortunately, that did away with the Elementor 500 Internal Server Error completely!
Ever since, my Elementor sidebar is loading reliably and faster than ever, and publishing and updating large cumbersome posts works smoothly and without any problem!
→ Elementor For Photographers And Artists – QUICK & EASY Page Builder
If this didn't work for Me, what else can I do to fix the Elementor 500 Internal Server Error?
Other ways to fix the Elementor 500 Internal Server Error and increase your WordPress memory limit include the following:
- Editing your theme’s functions.php file
- Configuring the php.ini file of your local server application
I’ve found a couple of good tutorials that you can check out for this matter:
- How to increase the Maximum file upload size in WordPress
- Increase Media File Maximum Upload Size in WordPress Step by Step Guide
Also check out the information provided by Elementor themselves to help you solve the issue:
I hope this post was able to help you troubleshoot any Elementor 500 Internal Server Error issues on your WordPress site. I wish you lots of fun and success in building your artist website! Angie ♡
