CodeIgniter not loading model

Question

In my controller (controllers/user.php), I have:

class User extends CI_Controller 
{
    public function index() 
    {       
         $this->load->model('user_model')or die("error");  
    }
}

In my model (models/user_model.php), I have

class User_model extends CI_Model
{
    public function __construct()
    {
        parent::__construct();
        $this->load->database();
        $this->load->helper('common');
    }
}

If I remove the

or die("error");

from the load statement, I get a 500 internal server error.

I checked config.php and here's some info

$config['base_url'] = ''; 
$config['index_page'] = '';
$config['uri_protocol'] = 'AUTO';

I have also edited the .htaccess file to remove the "index.php" from the URL to make it cleaner.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond $1 !^(index.php|images|captcha|css|js|robots.txt)
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php/$1 [L,QSA]

Answer 1

It is said to be a best practice to load models, libraries in __construct (constructor)

class User extends CI_Controller 
{
    public function __construct() 
    {       
         parent:: __construct();
         $this->load->model('user_model');  
    }

}

Please also try changing Controller name 'User' to 'Users' (not wrong but try it if not working). Naming conflict may be.