500 Internal Server Error after trying to remove /public/ from forum URL

averixus

The issue

I followed the documentation instructions as follows:

I moved all the files from the public directory to the root
I uncommented lines 9-15 in .htaccess
I edited the line $site = require './site.php'; in index.php

I edited these lines in site.php:

'base' => __DIR__,
'public' => __DIR__,
'storage' => __DIR__.'/storage',

I updated the url in config.php to the new address without the /public/

Now both the new address and the old one with /public/ are giving 500 Internal Server Error. There's nothing in the server error log.

Flarum information

Flarum core: 1.8.9
PHP version: 8.2.18
MySQL version: 5.7.23-23
Loaded extensions: Core, date, libxml, openssl, pcre, zlib, filter, hash, json, pcntl, random, readline, Reflection, SPL, session, standard, bcmath, bz2, calendar, ctype, curl, dom, mbstring, fileinfo, ftp, gd, gettext, gmp, iconv, imap, intl, exif, mysqlnd, odbc, PDO, pgsql, Phar, posix, pspell, SimpleXML, soap, sockets, sodium, sqlite3, tidy, tokenizer, xml, xmlwriter, xsl, zip, mysqli, pdo_mysql, PDO_ODBC, pdo_pgsql, pdo_sqlite, xmlreader, apcu, imagick, Zend OPcache
+--------------------------+---------+--------+
| Flarum Extensions        |         |        |
+--------------------------+---------+--------+
| ID                       | Version | Commit |
+--------------------------+---------+--------+
| flarum-suspend           | v1.8.3  |        |
| flarum-tags              | v1.8.2  |        |
| fof-user-bio             | 1.4.2   |        |
| flarum-subscriptions     | v1.8.1  |        |
| flarum-sticky            | v1.8.1  |        |
| flarum-statistics        | v1.8.1  |        |
| flarum-pusher            | v1.8.1  |        |
| flarum-mentions          | v1.8.4  |        |
| flarum-markdown          | v1.8.1  |        |
| flarum-lock              | v1.8.1  |        |
| flarum-likes             | v1.8.1  |        |
| flarum-lang-english      | v1.8.0  |        |
| flarum-flags             | v1.8.1  |        |
| flarum-extension-manager | v1.0.4  |        |
| flarum-emoji             | v1.8.1  |        |
| flarum-bbcode            | v1.8.0  |        |
| dhtml-composer           | 2.1.5   |        |
+--------------------------+---------+--------+
Base URL: https://community.tradescantia.uk
Installation path: /home3/tuhopymy/public_html/website_5850233a
Queue driver: sync
Session driver: file
Mail driver: mail
Debug mode: off

luceos

averixus this is an Apache error, you ought to see the error in the error log of Apache. Flarum isn't directly hit, so no errors are logged there.

averixus

luceos Thanks! I checked the cpanel error log and it pointed to a problem in .htaccess:

[Sun Feb 16 03:26:53.351922 2025] [core:alert] [pid 969368:tid 23399311410944] [remote 77.169.172.26:50785] /home3/tuhopymy/public_html/website_5850233a/.htaccess: Expected </!--> but saw </IfModule>, referer: https://community.tradescantia.uk/

Double-checked that file and found that I had accidentally uncommented a line of the comment and so the file wasn't readable. 🤦‍♂️ Now that's fixed, the forum is working perfectly at the intended URL!