Error Codes While Importing

Server Error 500

If you get a 500 error (500 Internal Server Error) while importing a Site, it means there’s likely a server error preventing the site from importing.

The following server settings can be increased to better allow GP to upload and process the import files.

  • upload_max_filesize (256M)
  • max_input_time (300)
  • memory_limit (256M)
  • max_execution_time (300)
  • post_max_size (512M)

These values aren’t perfect, as it depends on the size of the site you’re importing. We like to keep things small, so the above values should be more than enough. If you’re not comfortable tweaking these yourself, your hosting support should be able to help you.

502 bad gateway

This error can happen if you’re on an nginx server. To fix it, you need to add this to your server config file:

fastcgi_buffers 16 16k; 
fastcgi_buffer_size 32k;

400 Error

400 errors are typically permission-related.

We’ve seen 400 errors happening during import with users using EasyEngine on their servers. More info on that here.

Further Debugging

If the above solutions don’t work, we need to debug further.

Add the following into your wp-config.php file in your root WordPress folder:

define( 'WP_DEBUG', true );
define( 'WP_DEBUG_LOG', true );

Run the importer again until your encounter the error.

Now you’ll find a file named debug.log in the wp-content folder on your server. Open this file, and look at the end for any errors.