While working on my site I saw the notification on the WP dashboard that WP 2.9.1 was available so I did the auto install. I had just looked at my site so I know it was up. Right after the WP 2.9.1 install my site went dead with the message:

"Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@tuneintocancer.org and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request."

I switched to two other themes as a test and the site is accessible. With Atahualpa I can reach the dashboard but not my home page http://tuneintocancer.org/blog/ . It seems that either there is a corrupt file or a bug. Any ideas?!

if you have FTP access, I would download a copy of WP 2.9.1 to your computer then upload all but the wp-contents folder. Thei will make sure you have a fresh copy.

um...you did do a backup of the database and your files before you did the upgrade...right??

I tried to do a complete backup YESTERDAY but the ftp connection kept getting dropped with to many connections, so no, I have no backup. But it's a new site so not much there to lose aside from all of the customizing I did to the theme itself. I can probably recreate it if I have to. I will try to upload the folders as you suggest.

But... Other themes work. It's Atahualpa that doesn't. Doesn't that exclude it from being a WP problem?

I was just able to download the Atahualpa folder with everything under it so hopefully if I have to blow it away and reinstall I will still be able to upload my customized settings. Deactivating it and reactivating it does nothing.

It's live again, but not before panic set in. First I downgraded WP via fantastico deluxe through my web host. WP 2.8.6 was the latest. When I did that, I got a totally different fatal error on Atahualpa bfa_get_options.php line 2.

I'm pretty much a WP and website newb so I didn't know about phpMyAdmin. I went to the WP site and got the instructions for backing up the db using phpMyAdmin and did so. I do have a few posts that I could not recreate so that's good.

I just got this message from my web host support person:

"The blog did appear to load for me when I last responded, however I am now seeing the error recur. I took a look at the error_log file and it seems that it is now encountering an out of memory error. This could be due to some incorrect settings on the blog or a plugin or template, so I would advise updating these files as well to ensure that this is properly addressed.

As a temporary measure, I created a copy of the php.ini within the blog directory to override the default memory settings (raising them to 512MB) which appears to allow the blog to load correctly."

I'm afraid to touch anything now but at least I have my database backed up. All was well until I upgraded to WP 2.9.1. I think I'll stay put for now.

sounds to me like this was a php memory issue. Each theme, plugin not to mention WP itself all take some memory. How many pluging do you have?

A good database plugin is wp-dbmanager, you can set it to do automatic backups every x days
to have a backup you can use there are three things you neeed
1) an SQL export of the database
2) a backup of the entire wp-contents directory
3) a copy of your wp-config.php

with these three things, you can recreate your site anywhere