I’ve built and uploaded three WordPress based websites this week, so at the moment I’m pretty ‘well-schooled’ in how to migrate from a local to live server.

I had a curious error with the third.

Somehow, it just wouldn’t display after uploading. Here’s my usual workflow:

Upload Files to Server
Export SQL Database
Import SQL Database to New Location
Update the wp-config.php file to include my new database credentials
Log into the new SQL Database and adjust the home and site_url records in the wp-options table

This process has served me quite well, but not in this particular case.
Just to ensure I hadn’t missed a step, I wiped and completed them all a second time. Still getting a 500 error.

I had not set up permalinks yet, so there was no .htaccess file to contend with (a common cause), and I can ensure the settings described above were perfect.

I was stumped.

WP_DEBUG

In the wp-config.php file, I’ll found the WP_DEBUG setting set to false.
I set this to true and added a couple of values of my own:

define('WP_DEBUG', true);

/* And at the very bottom of the file */
ini_set('display_errors',1);
error_reporting(E_ALL);

define('WP_DEBUG', true);

/* And at the very bottom of the file */

ini_set('display_errors',1);

error_reporting(E_ALL);

When I next refreshed the page, it told me exactly where to look for my error.
My error was caused by a custom class I downloaded not being compatible with the live-server’s version of PHP. It was a simple fix, which I implemented quickly.
It’s error report was a lot more informative than simple ’500′

Took me a while to find this solution though. Time wasted!

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