Email Question:
Hi Ed
I tried to go into maintenance mode at xxxxxx.com and now I can’t access the site. The reason I went into maintenance mode was to activate W3TC which I did and I think it is after that that the 500 error occured.
I have a BPS Pro account but on this site it is still the free version installed
François
Answer:
If your Public IP Address/Computer IP Address has changed then you will need to FTP to your website and either delete the .htaccess file in your website Root folder or download the .htaccess file and change the IP address to your current Public IP Address and upload the .htaccess file back to your website root folder.
W3TC writes .htaccess code to your root .htaccess file and it looks for the standard # BEGIN WordPress place holder in the root .htaccess file. The BPS Maintenance .htaccess file does not contain that # BEGIN WordPress place holder so what happens is W3TC writes the .htaccess to the bottom of the file and does not add a newline / space above its code so it ends up writing to the wrong place in the .htaccess file and a 500 error will occur. What you will need to do is manually add the W3TC code to the BPS Maintenance Mode .htaccess file by following these steps.
1. Download the .htaccess file and cut the W3TC .htaccess code from the bottom of the file and paste it right after # BULLETPROOF PRO 5.M MAINTENANCE .HTACCESS at the top of the Maintenance Mode .htaccess file. Be very careful to get all of the code starting from # BEGIN W3TC xxxxxx to # END W3TC xxxxx.
2. Upload the modified .htaccess file back to your website Root folder.
NOTE: AutoLock will mostly likely need to be turned Off on the Edit/Upload/Download page while performing this manual fix.
.
