{"id":2377,"date":"2019-10-15T23:00:04","date_gmt":"2019-10-15T23:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/2019\/10\/15\/your-ultimate-guide-to-wordpress-troubleshooting"},"modified":"2019-10-17T18:49:01","modified_gmt":"2019-10-17T18:49:01","slug":"your-ultimate-guide-to-wordpress-troubleshooting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/2019\/10\/15\/your-ultimate-guide-to-wordpress-troubleshooting\/","title":{"rendered":"Your Ultimate Guide to WordPress Troubleshooting"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>WordPress is a phenomenal platform for\u00a0creating your website. As a content management system, it offers so much more than a simple site builder.<\/p>\n<p>WordPress powers\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/wordpress.org\/\">34 percent of websites<\/a>. That includes Rolling Stone, Bloomberg, and the Obama Foundation.<\/p>\n<p>For all its fantastic features, if you use it long enough, you&#8217;ll need to use some WordPress troubleshooting. Some of these steps are pre-emptive so many them part of your regular maintenance routine.<\/p>\n<p>Read on to learn the steps you can take to troubleshoot your website.<\/p>\n<h2>1. Is Your Version Up To Date?<\/h2>\n<p>The WordPress developers regularly release updates. So far, there\u00a0have been <a href=\"https:\/\/codex.wordpress.org\/Current_events\">29 new versions<\/a>\u00a0of the 4.1 release.<\/p>\n<p>An outdated version of WordPress can lead to security issues and incompatibility problems.<\/p>\n<p>Run a backup of your entire site before you update the core files. That way, if the new core contains a problem, you can roll back to the previous version.<\/p>\n<h2>2. Are You Having Plugin Problems?<\/h2>\n<p>One of the main reasons why\u00a0your website has problems can be its <a href=\"https:\/\/wemanageyoursite.com\/wordpress-plugins-not-working-heres-how-to-troubleshoot-2\/\">WordPress plugins<\/a>. So why do they cause problems?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>They could be out of date,<\/li>\n<li>Your plugins might be badly written,<\/li>\n<li>Or they&#8217;re incompatible with your version of WordPress.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Checking for issues with your plugins is usually the first step in WordPress troubleshooting.<\/p>\n<p>How do you tell which WordPress plugin has caused the problem?<\/p>\n<p>Did the issues happen after you installed or updated a single plugin? If so, that&#8217;s the plugin causing the problem.<\/p>\n<p>You may also get an error message telling you a file is causing problems. It&#8217;ll contain the plugin name in the message.<\/p>\n<p>Disabling or deactivating the plugin is your next step to check if it\u00a0<em>is\u00a0<\/em>your problem.<\/p>\n<h3>How to Disable Plugins From the Dashboard<\/h3>\n<p>Some plugins will cause issues that don&#8217;t affect your ability to access the admin dashboard of your website.<\/p>\n<p>In this case, go to the Plugins menu. Click the Deactivate button beside the plugin&#8217;s name.<\/p>\n<p>Go back to your website. If the problem has been solved then you know which plugin caused it.<\/p>\n<h3>How to Disable Plugins From\u00a0Your Web Host<\/h3>\n<p>If you can&#8217;t access your website at all, you&#8217;ll need to follow a different route to deactivate misbehaving plugins.<\/p>\n<p>Some web hosts use cPanel so you can access the files that make up your website. Renaming the plugin folder will deactivate the folder.<\/p>\n<p>But if your host doesn&#8217;t use cPanel, they&#8217;ll use a similar control panel. Often, they offer a WebFTP option.<\/p>\n<p>Once you log in using your web host credentials, look for your website folder. Inside that, look for the wp-content folder.<\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;ll find the plugins folder instead, which you can rename to deactivate the plugin.<\/p>\n<h3>Finding the Plugin<\/h3>\n<p>What if you have no idea which plugin is causing problems? Deactivate all of them. Reactivate them one at a time until you recreate the error.<\/p>\n<p>If you can access the dashboard, select all of the plugins and choose &#8216;deactivate&#8217; from the dropdown menu.<\/p>\n<p>For those using their web host&#8217;s control panel, rename the entire plugin folder.<\/p>\n<h3>Next Steps<\/h3>\n<p>When you identify the problem plugin, you have three options. You can contact its developer if you know who that is.<\/p>\n<p>You can start a thread in the WordPress.org Support section. The community can provide support if you need it.<\/p>\n<p>Note, if you paid for the plugin, the creator probably offers support as part of the purchase price.<\/p>\n<p>If that doesn&#8217;t work, try a new plugin. Many plugins do the same thing, so you should be able to find a replacement.<\/p>\n<h2>3. Is Your Theme Up To Date?<\/h2>\n<p>Like your version of WordPress, your themes also need to be updated. If you use something like the Genesis Framework, that also needs regular updates.<\/p>\n<p>As with step #1, run a backup before you update any themes.<\/p>\n<p>When you log in to your dashboard, check the themes page. If there are any updates available, make sure you install them.<\/p>\n<p>What if you have a problem\u00a0<em>after\u00a0<\/em>you update a theme? Try switching to one of the default themes like Twenty Sixteen. If the problem goes away, you know the theme is the issue.<\/p>\n<p>Rollback to your backup until the developer can issue a new update.<\/p>\n<p>If you can&#8217;t access the dashboard, hop over to your web host control panel. Find the \/wp-content\/themes\/ folder.<\/p>\n<p>Rename all of the theme folders except one of the defaults. This will force WordPress to load the default theme.<\/p>\n<h2>4. Are Your Permalinks Badly Configured?<\/h2>\n<p>Sometimes you can get unexpected 404 errors if a permalink structure isn&#8217;t updated.<\/p>\n<p>Log into your dashboard and go to the Settings menu. Choose Permalinks and just click &#8216;Save Changes&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>This refreshes your permalinks to make them load properly.<\/p>\n<h2>5. Do You Think Your Site Has Malware?<\/h2>\n<p>Malware can end up on your site in a range of ways. It behaves\u00a0differently depending on who wrote it.<\/p>\n<p>The malware might\u00a0infect your visitors&#8217; machines when they land on your website. It could run inappropriate advertising or send your traffic to another website.<\/p>\n<p>Or hackers might simply change the content on your site.<\/p>\n<p>One way to avoid this is to choose a web host that offers security measures at their end. Managed WordPress hosting is the best option if your budget allows for it.<\/p>\n<p>You can also install a security plugin designed to provide a firewall for your website. Other plugins will scan for changes to the code, comparing it against the publicly released versions.<\/p>\n<p>Keeping regular backups of your website means you can also return to an older, but safe, version until you can clean up your code.<\/p>\n<h2>Try These WordPress Troubleshooting Tips<\/h2>\n<p>Any of these problems are an easy fix for a seasoned professional. But if you want to do your WordPress troubleshooting yourself, just follow these steps.<\/p>\n<p>Having a good maintenance regime is a great way to avoid problems. But sometimes they happen anyway.<\/p>\n<p>Error messages in your dashboard can give you clues about what the problem is. Use those clues to choose the right fix.<\/p>\n<p>Whatever happens, make sure you don&#8217;t panic. Every problem has a solution, particularly when it involves WordPress.<\/p>\n<p>Why not check out our tips and tricks articles for more helpful advice?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WordPress is a phenomenal platform for\u00a0creating your website. As a content management system, it offers so much more than a simple site builder. WordPress powers\u00a034 percent of websites. That includes Rolling Stone, Bloomberg, and the Obama Foundation. For all its fantastic features, if you use it long enough, you&#8217;ll need to use some WordPress troubleshooting. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2378,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[106],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v15.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Your Ultimate Guide to WordPress Troubleshooting | SiteUptime Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"If you use wordpress long enough, you will eventually have to do some wordpress troubleshooting. 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