text: what is a http 500 server error and how can i fix it? what is a http 500 server error and how can i fix it? i am trying to get on a website and it says that its a http 500 servor error.. thank you this is a 'catch-all' error generated by your web server. basically something has gone wrong, but the server can not be more specific about the error condition in its response to the client. in addition to the 500 error notified back to the client, the web server should generate some kind of internal error log which gives more details of what went wrong. it is up to the operators of your web server site to locate and analyse these logs.  any client (e.g. your web browser or our checkupdown robot) goes through the following cycle when it communicates with your web server:  obtain an ip address from the ip name of your site (your site url without the leading 'http://'). this lookup (conversion of ip name to ip address) is provided by domain name servers (dnss).  open an ip socket connection to that ip address.  write an http data stream through that socket.  receive an http data stream back from your web server in response. this data stream contains status codes whose values are determined by the http protocol. parse this data stream for status codes and other useful information.  nothing you can do on your end its a server problem and needs to be fixed at their end