Error 500 message when saving K2 Items and Categories
K2 2.5.7
Joomla 2.5.6

Hello I have recently started getting Error 500 massages when I try to save an Item or a Category.

While trying to discover the source of the issue with my host provider Hostgator, I found a post which solves the issue but I don't know why.

To stop getting the Error 500 message I had to disable the 'Smart Search - k2'
Extensions / Plug-in Manager / Smart Search - k2

I also fixed the Database by going to:
Extensions / Extension Manager
Click the Database tab and then click fix top right.

As soon as I did this my Error 500 issue was fixed.

I would like to know if the 'Smart Search - K2' is important / required and what is it's function. Is there another way to correct the issue without disabling the plug-in if it is required?

I also noticed on another post regarding this issue that the script might be taking too long to be processed and but I get the 500 Error straight away when I pressed save so I don't think that was causing the issue in this case.

Many thanks,
Neil.

Okay, I am going to reply to my own topic here. I actually received some help from Simon (moderator) which pointed me in the right direction to figuring this out.

My website is using Joomla 2.5.6 but this is NOT a clean install. My site originally started out as Joomla 1.7 and has been upgraded to 2.5.6. Somewhere along the way during the upgrades the Smart Search function has been deleted and does not exist on my site.

K2 comes with 'Smart Search - K2' which is enabled automatically. I'm guessing that this plugin utilises the Joomla's own Smart Search in some way to index the Items and Categories. Now because Joomla's Smart Search had been deleted during one of my upgrades to 2.5.6, saving Item's and Categories could not be done without disabling 'Smart Search - K2'. This is because the table does not exist on the database for the finder to write to.

So what's the answer?
Basically I had to do a clean install of Joomla 2.5.6 to get the Smart Search component back. I know this is not good news if you have lots of pages etc but it's the only way (that I know of). I have tried the option of going to Extensions / Extension Manager / Discover, to locate the missing component but this does not work either.

Once you have performed your new Joomla installation you need to do the following to ensure 'Smart Search - K2' will work properly.

• Go to: Extensions / Extension Manager
• Sort by Smart Search or look for 'finder' and ensure they are all enabled
• Now hover over the Components link and click Smart Search
• Click 'Index' to index all of the content on your website. This can take a little time if you have a few pages.

And that's it. In short, if you're missing Joomla's Smart Search component because you upgraded from an earlier version of Joomla it's tough luck. I hope this helps someone else as I've spent quite a bit of time arriving at this answer.

Cheers,
Neil

Thanks for the feedback.

Well, I had the same issue as well. Whenever I tried to create a new category after a fresh install of K2 (no matter it's new or old, 2.5+) it just gave me 500 error up.

I actually moved my Joomla installation from Windows WAMP server to a Production Linux Web server. I had to update my joomla tmp/log directory configuration from Global Settings of Joomla.

After that K2 worked like a charm.

I just signed up on this forum to specially put my feedback.
Thanks to community for giving such a wonderful OpenSource component.

Web Dev,
Sat.

Hello
Same issue, but I looked at my configuration and the answers above did not help. I turn on debug mode and had this answer
0 DateTime::__construct() [datetime.--construct]: Failed to parse time string (**27-04-2013 09:37:22**) at position 0 (*): Unexpected character

(french date format)

does anybody know what to do ? tyhank you . I precise that I have Joomla 3.03 K2 and k2maps and k2tabs pro.

thank you in advance

I updatet a joomla 1.5 site with k2 2.2 or 2.3.
Now i use Joomla 2.5 anf K2 2.6

Somewhere in the database, the date is stored as "30-11--0001 00:00:00". You recognize the -- between month and year.

I think k2 should not throw a 500-error here, as this is not a serious server-error ^^

Please just display an error-message (Japplication:enqeueMessage) and set the current date to the value of the field.

---

500 - Es ist ein Fehler aufgetreten
DateTime::__construct() [datetime.--construct]: Failed to parse time string (30-11--0001 00:00:00) at position 0 (3): Unexpected character

See if the solution getk2.org/community/New-to-K2-Ask-here-first/170475-DateTime__construct-datetime--construct-#170475 solved the problem