I did a wordpress backup with backupbuddy wordpress plugin from my shared hosting so as to move it to my new self-managed VPS (not my first time). But this time around, when i tried to run the import.php file on the new server so as to restore the wordpress site i kept getting a 500 internal server error. A 500 error can be caused by a whole of things making it very hard to track(** for my mind). After no success fixing it for a while, i stumbled on the ultimate basic for any web development or hosting issue whenever there is a problem. It is so basic, i am supposed to be flogged (but hey to err is human). I was reminded about checking the error log. When i did i saw a error saying "UID of script "/home/*****/domains/*****/public_html/*****/wp-admin/index.php" is smaller than min_uid". So i went to google and found out that the file i was trying to access ( the import.php and the zipped wordpress installation were uploaded via root account which makes it impossible for me to access it as another user. The solution was found here http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1077704
I then went ahead via SSH to change the ownership using

chown -R username:group DirectoryToBeChanged

.
Then i started getting 403 error (forbidden access). So i went ahead to Chmod, this i did via ftp. I actually chmod to 755 for the whole directory and everything was solved.


Just incase you do not understand this just ignore, and when you get this issue and google, nairaland would be there for you.

nice