s2Member crashed my website

I installed s2Member on my wordpress site and the entire site crashed immediately. Below is what my webhost (Dreamhost) replied to my plea for help. I hope it helps prevent this from happening to others. (I would have sent it to your technical support team, but I couldn’t find an email address.)

From Dreamhost:

There error is:

bash-4.1# tail ../logs/sandbox.nzlee.com/http/error.log
[Tue Apr 03 16:05:47 2012] [alert] [client 12.248.40.138]
/home/noezl/sandbox.nzlee.com/.htaccess: RewriteBase: argument is not a
valid URL

It looks like the plugin inserted code into the .htaccess file. I have
commented out the offending line (“RewriteBase sandbox_nzlee_com”) to
solve for now:

bash-4.1# cat .htaccess
# BEGIN s2Member GZIP exclusions

RewriteEngine On
# RewriteBase sandbox_nzlee_com
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (^|?|&)s2member_file_download=.+
RewriteRule .* – [E=no-gzip:1]

# END s2Member GZIP exclusions

# BEGIN WordPress

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index.php$ – [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

# END WordPress

I know there have been some other htaccess file issues with some other hosts. What version of apache are they running?

Dave

I’m sorry … I have no idea and wouldn’t know how to find out.