you caused it by working on blocking spam how? what were you doing? fiddling with your .htaccess? editing blog files? what?

the error code 500 you see is probably caused by changes you made in your .htaccess - clean out those changes.

for the record, your post requires anyone that helps to guess at what you might have done. in the future, more info is always better than less :)

I tried actually fully removing the .htaccess file -- and that didn't work either -- I did change a few little things in a few little files along the way -- and I was trying to reload the original files from the original installation configuration, and then that didn't work, so I tried to restore the files to what I had before I switched them, and now nothing works -- I can't even re-install b2evolution. I'm totally stymied.

The original problem was that I was being linked to from google, and folks were getting shot straight to my main page -- and I tried to change that -- and when I did, everything got messed up -- that's when I tried to switch out the .htaccess files, that didn't work -- so I tried to replace what had worked before, and it all went 'poof'!

I don't know what to try now.

Thanks!
Kent

Your posts are stored in the database, so first make a backup of that using phpmyadmin, then back up your skin if you've made any changes to it.

Then delete everything. (keep a backup though on your own computer, just delete the files from your server)

Re-download a copy of b2evo, open up conf/_config.php and fill in your database and other details, ensuring you set config is done to 1. Then upload everything. Upload your skin if you made changes to it (or if it wasn't one that's included). Nearly all of your settings will remain, as will your posts since they're all stored in the database.

I actually already did all of that, and it didn't work, down to the letter.

Except that I didn't back up the phpmyadmin -- how do I back that up -- and I can try to do that whole process again, but it didn't work the last time -- I just kept coming up with what you see at my site now...

I'm fully confused!

Thanks.
Kent

Did you rename the sample.htaccess to just .htaccess?

I called the .htaccess file kent.htaccess and there is another .htaccess file that my webserver set up for me that's just .htaccess -- they both have different stuff in them... The one that is kent.htaccess is based on the ones I checked out through the forums here -- and it worked, I just had the permalinks a little messed up to my site -- and the one my web server set up for me worked too, but had more simple info -- just ip addresses to block.

Kent

I don't know what you mean by working, but anything other than plain old .htaccess will be ignored by apache. kent.htaccess is not a valid name.

[url=http://www.freewebmasterhelp.com/tutorials/htaccess/].htaccess basics[/url]

I deleted the kent.htaccess and it worked -- I also deleted a few other files that might have been in the way -- anyway, my blog is up again.

Back to the issue I was trying to fix in the first place -- how to get my permalinks back. Go to kentgustavson.com/blog -- you will see that if you try to click on a permalink, you will simply go back to the main page -- I don't know why that is... any idea? The .htaccess file is completely gone now --

Thanks
Kent

That's why! You need the .htaccess. Rename sample.htaccess to .htaccess and it should work. If it doesn't, you'll need to delete the .htaccess and uncheck use extra path info from the settings screen.

I tried to change the .htaccess file, or to use the sample.htaccess as .htaccess -- nothing worked -- it all brought up the error message.

Am I going to be really unhappy and full of spam without an .htaccess file -- is there anything else I can do?

And last question -- now that my site has different addresses for all of its entries, is google going to re-crawl?

But the spam is my biggest concern -- I seem to get almost all of my spam from the stats feature, and I wish I could just turn it off entirely -- what can I do?

Thank you for all of your help.
Kent Gustavson

My webserver restored the .htaccess file -- hopefully that will help with the spam -- but it is in my kentgustavson.com folder, not the kentgustavson.com/blog folder -- is that okay?

And I switched the permalinks to id, and not specific address -- is there any way to go back to specific address permalinks?

Thanks.
Kent

That should be fine. You can change the permalinks in the settings screen. If you don't post the error messages, it's hard to help. But if you're 100% sure the content of your .htaccess file is correct (you could post it so we can have a look at it), you might want to start looking for another host, since they may be overly paranoid and not let you configure your own .htaccess rules.