Can't add Wordpress theme (500 error on themes.php)

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by patty1 » Wed Jul 04, 2018 3:16 pm
I want to add a theme to a website on which I'm running Wordpress, but every time I go to /wp-admin/themes.php, I get a 500 Internal Server Error message. I checked my Wordpress directory via a command-line program, and themes.php is there and has the same permissions as the other php files. I even downloaded the file to my Mac for safekeeping, then went to Github, got the latest themes.php code, and substituted that for the old file. Still no luck. The other options in the Appearance menu work fine. I called Sonic support, but they said they don't support Wordpress. I don't know what else to do, since this seems to be an error on their server. Any ideas?

p.s. I also just noticed that I'm getting a 500 error on Dashboard > Updates and Plugins > Installed Plugins.
by drew.phillips » Thu Jul 05, 2018 9:39 am
Hi Patty,

I took a quick look at your site and the .htaccess code for the WordPress install was a much older variation of how PHP and WordPress are configured. I've updated it to use PHP 5.6 and mod_rewrite instead of "cgiwrap" which I think was part of the problem.

Can you try again and let me know if you're able to add themes now? The file I changed was the .htaccess file in the root of your site directory and I left the old code for reference and added the updated code with my name and comment.
Drew Phillips
Programmer / System Operations, Sonic.net
by patty1 » Thu Jul 05, 2018 11:18 am
Thank you, Drew! At first, I got only a blank page when I clicked on Themes (which was at least arguably better than an error message :-)), but after I saw that there was an update to Wordpress itself, I installed that and the Themes page appeared. I was able to then successfully install a new theme.

When you get a chance, could you please give me a quick response to my other thread about mixing WP and non-WP pages? The domain you fixed for me is not my main one; I'm just using it to experiment with WP. Then I want to switch the home page and a few other pages on my main site to WP, but without affecting the less-important pages that can stay in hand-coded HTML. Thanks!
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