Experiencing a 500 Error on the Internet is a common and a totally inconvenient occurrence.
Essentially, it means that something went wrong on our server (the thing that keeps our website running) and we are momentarily unable to display the page or content you are attempting to access.
In these cases, the best thing to do is check our status page.
If you see a green band that claims "All Systems Operational," then we're not experiencing a total outage... but there may still be performance issues listed under Website Response Time (the responsiveness of our main site) and eReader Response Time (the responsiveness of our eReader only).
If either's response time is over 800ms, then our site is currently unable to respond to your browser's query in enough time--hence the 500 Error.
These slowdowns are typically resolved in 10 minutes, so just keep an eye on the status page and you'll see things clear up very soon!
Experiencing issues for longer than 10 minutes? Let us know!