This blog seemed to work just fine but I was getting http 500 errors on my main site. Strangely I was able to view 2 or sometimes 3 pages before the error started but once I got the 500 error every page would then not work.

I viewed my hosts error log and first saw errors regarding these lines in my .htaccess file.

php_value session.use_trans_sid 0
php_value session.use_only_cookies 1

The simply stop the session ID being added to the URL and had been in my .htaccess file for ever. After removing these lines as a test I now saw lots of these errors logged.

[Fri Sep 04 03:45:46 2009] [notice] mod_fcgid: call
/home/bobpeers/public_html/blog/index.php with wrapper
/usr/local/cpanel/cgi-sys/php5
[Fri Sep 04 03:45:09 2009] [notice] mod_fcgid: call
/home/bobpeers/public_html/blog/index.php with wrapper
/usr/local/cpanel/cgi-sys/php5
[Fri Sep 04 03:44:51 2009] [notice] mod_fcgid: call
/home/bobpeers/public_html/HTTPErrors/500error.php with wrapper
/usr/local/cpanel/cgi-sys/php5

Seems like at some point my host went from using plain PHP5 to fastcgi but I have no idea if this is the cause of the error.

After 5 attempts to get a response from my hosts support without getting a single reply (and seeing that the forums are defunct and filled with spam) I decided it was time to jump ship.

After copying my content and MySQL databases he site is now back up running on Fatcow. it’s early days but I’m very happy so far.

My old host was very cheap but as the old saying goes ‘Pay peanuts and get monkeys’.

For reference my old host was Vonetwork and my advice is to steer clear!