Chandler Conway - 500 Errors & Plugin Update Plan
Created: January 29, 2026 Status: Root Cause Identified
The Problem
Google Ads are being disapproved because Googlebot is getting intermittent 500 errors when crawling landing pages: - /personal-injury/ - /personal-injury/car-accidents/ - /personal-injury/truck-accidents/
Root Cause: Memory Limit
PHP memory_limit: 128M - This is the actual problem.
The site runs ACF Pro, Gravity Forms, Relevanssi, Wordfence, FacetWP, and more. When Googlebot crawls pages rapidly, the server exhausts memory and crashes with:
Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 134217728 bytes exhausted
Flywheel blamed Wordfence, but Wordfence was just logging the crashes. The memory limit is the real issue.
Secondary Issue: Imagify Plugin
Imagify is throwing filesystem errors:
Warning: fileperms(): stat failed for /www/.wordpress/
This needs to be fixed or the plugin deactivated.
Plugins Needing Updates
| Plugin | Current | Available | Priority |
|---|---|---|---|
| ACF Font Awesome | 4.1.2 | 5.0.2 | High (major version) |
| Imagify | 2.2.6 | 2.2.7 | High (broken) |
| Google Site Kit | 1.166.0 | 1.171.0 | Medium |
| Wordfence | 8.1.2 | 8.1.4 | Medium |
| Relevanssi | 4.25.0 | 4.26.0 | Low |
| Redirection | 5.5.2 | 5.6.1 | Low |
| CPT UI | 1.18.1 | 1.18.3 | Low |
| Disable Gutenberg | 3.2.4 | 3.3 | Low |
| Show Current Template | 0.5.3 | 0.5.4 | Low |
Inactive plugins: wp-optimize, wp-rocket (can be deleted if not needed)
Action Plan
Step 1: Increase Memory Limit (Flywheel)
- [ ] Contact Flywheel to increase PHP memory_limit to 256M or 512M
- [ ] Update wp-config.php:
define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '256M'); - This alone may fix the 500 errors
Step 2: Fix Imagify
- [ ] Check Imagify settings/permissions
- [ ] Update to 2.2.7 or deactivate if not needed
- [ ] Clear any cached errors
Step 3: Update High-Priority Plugins
- [ ] Take full backup via Flywheel
- [ ] Update ACF Font Awesome (4.1.2 → 5.0.2) - test after
- [ ] Update remaining plugins one at a time
Step 4: Cleanup
- [ ] Delete inactive plugins (wp-optimize, wp-rocket) if confirmed not needed
- [ ] Remove "Show Current Template" if only used in dev
Step 5: Verification
- [ ] Test landing pages manually
- [ ] Request Google re-crawl of affected URLs
- [ ] Monitor for 500s in Flywheel logs
- [ ] Confirm ads get re-approved
Message for Flywheel
The WP-CLI investigation revealed the actual issue: PHP memory_limit is 128M, which is too low for this site's plugin stack (ACF Pro, Gravity Forms, Relevanssi, Wordfence, FacetWP). When the site is under load, it exhausts memory and throws fatal errors.
Please increase PHP memory_limit to 256M (or 512M if possible). This should resolve the intermittent 500 errors that Google's crawler is hitting.
Notes
- Wordfence was a red herring - it was logging errors, not causing them
- Memory limit is the #1 fix needed
- Plugin updates are secondary but should still be done