Title: HTTP ERROR 500 when manually purging cache
Last modified: January 4, 2018

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# HTTP ERROR 500 when manually purging cache

 *  [George M](https://wordpress.org/support/users/plan9/)
 * (@plan9)
 * [8 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/http-error-500-when-manually-purging-cache/)
 * Updating from version 0.9.5.4 to 0.9.6 throws a HTTP ERROR 500 – every time page
   cache is manually purged, or ‘purge all caches’ is selected from the menu.
 * Anyone else experiencing this?

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

 *  [davesohan](https://wordpress.org/support/users/davesohan/)
 * (@davesohan)
 * [8 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/http-error-500-when-manually-purging-cache/#post-9836938)
 * I did too but then I removed the plugin and re-did everything. I followed a tutorial
   
   [https://bloggingwizard.com/w3-total-cache-cloudflare/](https://bloggingwizard.com/w3-total-cache-cloudflare/)
   to set it up and now it works fine.
 *  Thread Starter [George M](https://wordpress.org/support/users/plan9/)
 * (@plan9)
 * [8 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/http-error-500-when-manually-purging-cache/#post-9839455)
 * Thanks [@davesohan](https://wordpress.org/support/users/davesohan/) for the tip.
 * I did try uninstalling / deleting / re-installing but the HTTP ERROR 500 still
   occurs on manual cache purges.
 * Incidentally I have a test server running an older version of WP – 4.8.4 and 
   that works fine with W3 Total cache 0.9.6 – but when I upgraded to WP 4.9.1 the
   HTTP ERROR 500 started occurring there as well.
 * I will await future W3TC releases and hope for a fix.
    -  This reply was modified 8 years, 4 months ago by [George M](https://wordpress.org/support/users/plan9/).
 *  Thread Starter [George M](https://wordpress.org/support/users/plan9/)
 * (@plan9)
 * [8 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/http-error-500-when-manually-purging-cache/#post-9839520)
 * I found that this is a known bug in the 0.9.6 update. It’s related to cloudlfare(
   any previous and current use with W3TC) and the fix / workaround is provided 
   here: [https://wordpress.org/support/topic/fatal-error-2749/](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/fatal-error-2749/)
 * Hopefully W3TC developers will fix this in future releases.
    -  This reply was modified 8 years, 4 months ago by [George M](https://wordpress.org/support/users/plan9/).
 *  [hsteigstra](https://wordpress.org/support/users/hsteigstra/)
 * (@hsteigstra)
 * [8 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/http-error-500-when-manually-purging-cache/#post-9997359)
 * I had the same problem too. My diagnosis is that the purge of the cache is caused
   by the huge CPU time it costs to delete all the individual folders that contain
   the cached pages (25000 in my case).
    I have solved this by creating a background
   task that removes each folder and immediately after that request that page again,
   so that the cache is immediately rebuilt. I pick one page per second. The purge&
   refresh of my total of 25000 pages takes then apx 8 hours. In foreground this
   would break the connection with the server after one minute, producing the “Internal
   server error 500” messsage.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

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## Tags

 * [HTTP error 500](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/http-error-500/)
 * [server-error](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/server-error/)

 * 4 replies
 * 3 participants
 * Last reply from: [hsteigstra](https://wordpress.org/support/users/hsteigstra/)
 * Last activity: [8 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/http-error-500-when-manually-purging-cache/#post-9997359)
 * Status: not resolved