I’m using WordPress 5.2.4, bbPress 2.6 RC 7. I can privately give anyone in-the-know and willing to help a link to a test site.

Symptoms – A search with one word typically works, but a search with more than one word typically gives HTTP error 500. Another symptom, the search first results page isn’t themed.

The symptoms occur with any/all themes, with all plug ins disabled except bbpress.

The symptoms appear like a server resource issue, but this is an AWS machine and more memory/CPU, increasing memory_limit in php.ini, doesn’t change symptoms.

Is there a limit on database size bbPress can handle? The site has roughly 18K users, 100 Forums, 30K Topics, 160K replies.

I’m grateful for any help, direction, diagnostics.

[@robin-w Moderator 5 years, 1 month ago]

database size should be no problem.

Since you already have a large bbpress forum, then has this issue just started, always been there, have you converted from another, updated from 2.5.12 ???? some history would be useful

[@stracy2 Participant 5 years, 1 month ago]

Hi Robin. Thank you for responding.

database size should be no problem

I’m glad to hear that, thank you.

This is a custom convert that is a work in progress.

Forums, Topic, Replies all look good, along with a single word search, but we just noticed this issue with searching more than one word.

Another clue, after enabling debug output, “sometimes” a two word search will give this error:
“Fatal error: Allowed memory size of bytes exhausted in /opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/htdocs/wp-includes/post.php on line 2272”

[@robin-w Moderator 5 years, 1 month ago]

hmm, sounds more like a database issue on conversion.

https://www.airpair.com/php/fatal-error-allowed-memory-size is the best help I can suggest

[@stracy2 Participant 5 years, 1 month ago]

Turns out if replies have no corresponding topic, that will cause the above symptoms (I can add one more symptom, the CPU on the server spikes until memory is exhausted). A manual, binary search through the Forums was used until what was causing the search issue was isolated.

Thank you for your help. Your reassurance the database wasn’t too big was helpful to keep digging for root cause.

[@robin-w Moderator 5 years, 1 month ago]

great – really pleased that you are fixed, and thanks for reporting back