Homepage returning a status code 500 after ES 3.01 update

Hi Si Team

I double checked this with Siteground

The homepage of the website is indeed returning a status code 500:

Code:

[~]: curl -IX GET https://finalbug.net

HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error

Server: nginx

Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2019 10:16:42 GMT

Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

Transfer-Encoding: chunked

Connection: keep-alive

P3P: CP="NOI ADM DEV PSAi COM NAV OUR OTRo STP IND DEM"

Cache-Control: no-cache

Pragma: no-cache

Set-Cookie: f5e018d7a5e3ff664448f461d1ad2f54=2211ea51287c9c2aa7bdb8db20a2e932; path=/; secure; HttpOnly

Vary: Accept-Encoding,User-Agent

Host-Header: 192fc2e7e50945beb8231a492d6a8024

When I open the website, it seems that a maintainance page is loading:

https://screenshots.firefox.com/WhdFakBLDu35FcHj/finalbug.net

Please double-check the settings and the page that is set as a homepage from your Joomla! application's dashboard. Please note that the status code in question is returned by the application, as the PHP scripts can adjust the Status code headers. I have confirmed that there are no server-side issues. If you are unable to remove the hompage that is displayed in my screenshot provided above, please contact the theme's developers for further investigation and troubleshooting the issue.

I am double checking with SiteGround after updating the Vanilla template.

But would appreciate if you could also check at your end?

It could be related to installation hiccups here:

https://stackideas.com/forums/es-3-01-failing-to-update-to-latest-stuck-initializing-database

The error that I have been seeing (sporadically) was

Call to a member function setMetaData() on null

Sorry for being so paranoid but I am still seeing the above error but not all the time!!!

And from Siteground

The homepage is still returning a 500 error. In order to confirm that, you should clear your browser's cache and open the Network tab in your browser. Then load the https://finalbug.net/ website.

Please note that the error is displayed only when the website is loaded for the first time. The error from my screenshot is also displayed.

Please proceed with the investigation and if the issue still persists, contact the template's developers for further assistance.

Should any other questions arise - you are welcome to contact us back.

Best Regards,

D

If you guys have any ideas I am all ears...

best

Paul