New Start: 5 Of The Most Common WordPress Errors and How to Fix Them

Undoubtedly, WordPress is a super easy CMS that makes website creation and maintenance tasks a breeze. However, there are some common WordPress errors that can give you a tough time in running your website efficiently. Before you start to panic, I’ve put together one troubleshooting guide that will help you learn how you can fix the commonly encountered WordPress errors.

Note: When you make any tweaks in your WordPress website custom file editor or any other place within your back-end, you might end up breaking your site. But, you can deal with such a problem, by creating a backup of your site. You can achieve such an objective using the BackupBuddy plugin, since it helps in creating WordPress website backup automatically.

5 Of The Most Common WordPress Errors and
How to Fix Them

So, let us now talk about 5 of the most commonly found WordPress errors and ways to troubleshoot and fix those errors:

#Error 1 – WordPress White Screen of Death

Often while accessing a WordPress page, you may find that the page opens, as a plain white (i.e. a blank) screen without any information or an error message – that looks something like:

pic-1

Viewing a blank screen will certainly leave you bewildered and puzzled, as you won’t have any clue what you exactly need to fix. This kind of error is called white screen of death – that occurs because of the plugin compatibility issues or you might experience such an issue after installing a new WordPress theme.

How This Issue Can Be Fixed: In case your plugin leads to compatibility issues, all you need to do is to login into your website admin dashboard screen and deactivate all your plugins; and then reactivate the plugins one by one. Chances are that you might not be able to access your WordPress administration screen. In that case, you’ll need to access the admin panel via FTP. Once the connection is established, look out for the wp-content/plugins folder and rename it to something like plugins_oldlist or anything you like. Doing so, will help you deactivate all of your installed plugins from the site.

You might encounter the white screen of death issue after activating a new WordPress theme. If that’s the case, then simply activate the default WordPress Twenty Fifteen theme from the admin dashboard screen. If you’re unable to access the admin screens, you’ll have to connect to your back-end using an FTP client. And then, locate the /wp-content/themes/ folder and change its name according to your active theme.

But in case none of the above troubleshooting steps, you can use the WordPress debug function to learn about the errors that are causing such an issue:

error_reporting(E_ALL); ini_set(‘display_errors’, 1);

define( ‘WP_DEBUG’, true);

Executing the above code will start displaying errors or warnings on your blank screen.

#Error 2 – Posts are Throwing 404 Error

When accessing posts on a WordPress site, they might get a “404 Not Found” error. There is nothing to panic, since your posts are completely safe. What causes such an error is when you accidentally delete the .htaccess file or something might have gone wrong with the rewrite rules, because of your website permalink settings.

How This Issue Can Be Fixed: You can fix this issue by reconfiguring the permalinks settings of your site. For this, access your website administration screen, and browse Settings → Permalinks. From there, choose the default permalinks option and hit the Save button. Next, reselect your choice of permalinks. Doing so, will flush the rewrite rules and will most likely solve your problem.

But, in case the above solution doesn’t work, you should consider manually updating your .htaccess file. Connect to your web server via an FTP client, and make modifications to the .htaccess file that can be found in the same location as your “/wp-content/” and “/wp-includes/” folders. In fact, the best thing you can do to resolve the posts returning 404 error is to make your .htaccess file writable by adding the following code within the file:

# BEGIN WordPress

RewriteEngine On

RewriteBase /

RewriteRule ^index\.php$ – [L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d

RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

</IfModule>

# END WordPress

#Error 3 – HTTP500 Internal Server Error

This is one of the most common errors that often puts novice developers in a panic state, since they can’t find exactly where the error has occurred. The HTTP500 internal server error is not related specifically to WordPress, rather you might experience it with anything running on your server. Put it simply, there could be several reasons that might be causing such an issue.

How This Issue Can Be Fixed: There are many different ways that can help in resolving the Internal server error, such as:

The internal server error is mostly likely caused due to corrupted .htaccess file. So, to fix that file you will have to log into your website root via FTP. Once you’ve located the .htaccess file, simply rename it to something like .htaccess_oldfile. And then, load your website to ensure if the problem has been resolved. If this solution works, then ensure to reset your website permalinks settings, as it will produce a new .htaccess file.
Another possible solution to resolve the internal server error requires deactivating all of the installed plugins on your site.
If plugins are not causing the internal server issue, then there are chances that your website theme might be the reason behind such problem. So, make sure to switch your existing theme with the default WordPress Twenty Fifteen Theme to get rid of any theme related issues.
Increasing the PHP Memory limit of your site can also help in solving the internal server error
Lastly, re-upload all of your website core files (like wp-admin, wp-includes, etc.) from a new WordPress install.

#Error 4 – You Can’t See Your Changes in The Browser

Oftentimes, when you make some changes to your site, you might not be able to see those changes in the browser. This happens because the browser usually reloads an already visited page to increase website load time. Basically, in order to provide faster access to information, browser saves the web pages that you visit. And whenever, you require to access a piece of information belonging to that page, it reloads the saved web page.

How This Issue Can Be Fixed: To make sure that the browser reloads the updated web page, you’ll need to clear your browser cache. You can find more about this process on the WordPress codex.

#Error 5 – Your Sidebar Appears Below the Content

Fig 1. Sidebar Appears Next to Content

Fig 2. Sidebar Appears Below the Content

The last common and major issue that you might face is that your website sidebar is visible below the content, instead of appearing on the other side the content.

How This Issue Can Be Fixed: There are mainly two reasons that make the sidebar appear below the content. This issue usually occurs because of inappropriate use of the div tags. At times, users when adding code to their WordPress site forget to write the <div> tag with the closing </div> tag. This results in breaking the layout of the theme, thereby drop the sidebar below the content rather than being displayed next to the content.

The second common cause is that sidebars have a large width compared to the available space, wherein you need to fit the sidebars. This happens when, you add padding, margins or borders to the sidebar in the theme, without adjusting its width. You can fix such a problem, by finding the width of the sidebars via the Firebug tool. Reduce the width of the padding, margins and borders to make the sidebar adjust to the space available in your theme.

A Few Other Troubleshooting Steps Worth Considering

Review Your Website Code in Detail, as bad code can cause a syntax error or might fire unnecessary redirects.

You might find problem establishing a connection with your WordPress website database. This happens when a user fills in the database credentials (such as username and password) incorrectly. So, make sure to take extra care when entering credentials to access the database.

Your visitors may see a message “Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance” in your sites quite often. While running updates, your WP install might automatically install a .maintenance file that makes that message appear in your website. Just log into your site and delete the .maintenance file if it exists to fix this issue.

Conclusion

Hope that the above discussed common WordPress errors and their solutions will help in making your website free from such errors.

Author Bio: Ava Garcia is a WordPress developer by profession and is working with OSSMedia Ltd- a WordPress Outsourcing and WordPress theme customization services company

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New Start

Thursday, October 29, 2015

5 Of The Most Common WordPress Errors and How to Fix Them