Common Wordpress Issues
Q The White Screen of Death
This error consists of a blank screen loading when you try to access the site in question.
The two major causes of this error are compatibility issues from plugins and themes. If you can access your administration panel, the best way to pinpoint this error is to try deactivating all your plugins one by one, and if that doesn't work, then try changing your theme to the default WordPress design.
If you can't access your administration panel, you'll have to manually deactivate the plugins and themes over FTP. After logging into your server, navigate to the plugins directory (usually wp-content/plugins) or the themes directory (wp-content/themes) and append '_old' to the end of the name.
From there try accessing your admin panel. If you get in, you can try reactivating your plugins or themes individually until you recreate the issue. Once that happens, you'll know the primary source of your
Q Maintenance Mode after an Upgrade
Updates are a vital part of keeping your WordPress website functional. Occasionally, however, the system doesn't clean up all the files from the process. If you ever get the message 'Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Please check back in a minute.' After updating your site, then you most likely need to remove your .maintenance file manually.
To do this, log into your website via your FTP program and delete the .maintenance file in your root folder. Your site should now work properly.
Q Error Establishing Database Connection
If you get a page featuring the message "Error Establishing Database Connection," this means that there is a problem with the connection to your database and there could be a number of reasons for this. The following are possible reasons and solutions.
"Error establishing a database connection" is usually caused by an error in your wp-config.php file. Access your site in your FTP client. Open up wp-config.php and ensure that the following are correct:
- Database name
- Database username
- Database password
- Database host
The server is down
Contact us to see if either of these issues is causing your problem.
If you have checked wp-config.php for errors and confirmed with us for hosting issues, it is possible that your site has been hacked. Scan your site with Sucuri SiteCheck to ensure that it hasn't been compromised. If it has, you should check out My Site was Hacked.
The server is down
Contact us to see if either of these issues is causing your problem.
Q You Make Changes and Nothing Happens
If you are making changes to your website and you do not see the changes in your browser, you may need to clear your browser cache. Your browser stores information about the websites that you visit. This makes it faster to load websites when you visit them because the browser just has to reload information already stored on your computer, rather than downloading it again.
If you make a change to a website and the browser does not think it is significant, it will simply load the data from your cache, and you won't see your changes. To fix the problem, simply empty your browser cache or close the tab and reopen the link.
If you have a server-side caching plugin installed, you will manually need to clear the cache via the admin control panel.
Q 500 Internal Server Error
The most common cause of a 500 Internal Server Error message is a corrupt .htaccess file. Additional causes can be a conflicting plugin or theme, or even a corrupt WordPress installation.
You will need FTP access on your server. Navigate to the root directory of your WordPress installation, and locate the .htaccess file. Rename the file to, let us say, something like .htaccess_old
Now reload your website. If it works, congratulations! You can now generate a new .htaccess file simply by navigating to Setting's>>Permalinks in your WP admin panel and re-saving the settings.