40 Most Common WordPress Errors & Issues

Common WordPress Errors & Issues – Troubleshooting

Table of Contents [TOC]

Common WordPress Errors & Issues – Troubleshooting

While WordPress is really easy to use, there are some common WordPress mistakes that can make you panic. The good thing is that the WordPress error you see on your site is most likely reported and resolved by someone before you. Here, we have written tutorials on how to fix various WordPress errors. In this article, we’ll cover the most common WordPress errors and show you how to fix these common WordPress issues.

Important: Before trying to fix WordPress errors, make sure you have a complete WordPress backup. You can use UpdraftPlus or use this tutorial to manually create a WordPress backup.

1. 500 Internal Server WordPress Error

Perhaps the most confusing WordPress error a newbie may encounter is “Internal Server Error” or sometimes “500 Internal Server Error”.

This error usually appears when there is a problem, but the server is not able to identify the location of the problem. Since the error message does not indicate where to look for the error, it is best that you understand it.

We have compiled a list of solutions you can try and one of them will help you solve WordPress Internal Server Error:

One of the solutions to fix the error is to deactivate all plugins and re-activate them.
If you can’t log into your WordPress dashboard, go to your file manager and go to wp-content. Remove all plugins and then try to reload the website.
If you are still unable to resolve the internal server error, there may be some issues with the hosting. Contact your web host to learn more about the problem.

Go to Detailed Guide (Step by Step) – How To Fix 500 Internal Server Error WordPress

2. Parse error: syntax error, unexpected

This error usually occurs when you try to add snippets in WordPress and by mistake you have lost something or the code has incorrect syntax. This will result in a PHP parsing error and you will see an alert like:

Parse error- syntax error, unexpected $end in /public_html/wp-content/themes/justwrite/functions.php on line 129

The error message indicates the unexpected changes in the code and the location of the script where the error occurred with the line number. To resolve this problem, you will need to correct the syntax. Most of the time it’s a missing parenthesis or an unexpected character in the code.

Go to Detailed Guide (Step by Step) – How To Fix Parse Error Syntax Error in WordPress

3. Establishing Database connection error in WordPress

This error message clearly indicates that your website cannot connect to the database. However, solving this error can be tricky for beginners.

This usually happens when a user has entered or changed their database credentials (database host, database user name, and password) incorrectly. Sometimes the database server may not respond or the database may be damaged.

However, most of the time this is incorrect database access credentials. Take a look at the common solutions to this problem.

Go to Detailed Guide (Step by Step) – How To Fix “Error Establishing a Database Connection”

4. WordPress white screen of death

This error usually results in a simple white screen without an error message. This makes it the most confusing because you don’t know where to look or what to fix.

Most of the time, this is due to a script with insufficient memory. It can also happen because of a configuration on the server. It is also possible that a user will only see a blank screen of death on certain parts of their site.

Increasing the PHP memory limit

you can increase the PHP memory limit by adding the following code to your wp-config.php file.

define( ‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ‘256M’ );

Try disabling all plugins and reactivating them.

Change themes

Go to Detailed Guide (Step by Step) – How To Fix WordPress White Screen Of Death

5. 404 error in WordPress

Symptoms of this error are as follows: When a user visits a single post on their site, they receive a 404 error – page not found wordpress.

The user can browse all other sections of his site, including the administration area. The most common cause of this problem is the permalink settings in WordPress. To resolve this issue, a user must reconfigure the permalink settings or manually update the rewrite rules.

6. Sidebar under content error in WordPress

Another common problem for beginners is when the sidebar appears below the content when it should appear next to the content. This problem is mainly caused by WordPress themes.

Sometimes when users add snippets to their site, they might accidentally forget to close an HTML div tag or add an extra closing div which could cause the theme to break down. Another common cause is using disproportionate widths in CSS or removing float properly.

Another reason why your sidebar is dropping below your content is that there is an HTML or CSS error in your theme.

Let’s have a look at the div structure:

Before you try to fix the issue in every way imaginable, there are a few sections that you can check for the bug.

First, you need to take a look, see, and know what parts of your site are affected by this error.
Only your pages are harmed: you should check page.php or other page files that you have.
The error is exposed in all your blog posts – double check your single.php file
Only pages that a plugin developed automatically are harmed – there is a snag with that plugin or the theme you used that had the offending plugin added to it.
Any page is affected when you add custom HTML or CSS – you need to check your customizations. You made changes to your theme – back up your entire site, delete the changes, and then create a child theme where you can integrate your customizations.

If you think you need to make customizations to a file, it is suggested that you track your changes with comments.

When you know the exact file that is affected, you can start evaluating them. If your pages or blog posts are the ones listed in the sidebar below the content error, you need to edit them. This also applies to a page where you have recently added custom HTML or CSS.

Open it using FTP, SSH or directly in cPanel by clicking on the Edit link in the File Manager. Next, find the missing, closed or added div tag, or fix your CSS. Save the file and, if you downloaded it first via FTP, upload the fixed copy and overwrite the previous one.

If a plugin or theme is affected, contact its creator and describe the problem so that they can integrate a satisfaction in their version that is to come or, otherwise, they will provide you with a satisfaction option.

If you used a plugin or theme to make HTML or CSS customizations, go back to where you added your changes, find where the error is, and then save your changes when you have corrected them.

7. White text / missing buttons in WordPress Visual Editor

Sometimes WordPress Visual Editor buttons might disappear or start showing blank spaces instead of buttons.

This problem can occur when chained JavaScript is not working. It could also be due to missing or corrupt TinyMCE files or a conflict with another plugin that modifies or extends TinyMCE that comes with WordPress.

As a WordPress user, it is important that you fix this white text and missing buttons error as soon as possible.

The WP dashboard looks like this where different style buttons (bold, underline, text color, etc.) are available.

Sometimes these buttons do not appear on the dashboard, preventing users from editing their messages.

8. Memory Exhausted Error in WordPress

Edit the WordPress wp-config.php file – wp-config.php is a file that comes by default in any WordPress installation. You can access it via FTP. It basically contains the data to connect your website to the database.

Add the following line of code to wp-config.php above the line “That’s it, stop editing! Happy blogging »(you will find it between lines 70 and 75):

define (‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ‘256M’);

By doing this, you are telling WordPress that it can increase its memory limit to 256MB. Save the changes and upload wp-config.php back to the root directory of your WordPress in which it appeared. Remember to replace the old version of the file with the new one.

To check if you have already solved the error, reload the page with Ctrl + F5 or Cmd + F5 and see if your website appears correctly.

Create php.ini file

Hasn’t the above worked for you? Well, revert the changes made to wp-config and try this second way to increase PHP memory. php.ini is a very important configuration file for your server. The reason? Configure the installation of PHP, technology used by WordPress.

If you examine the files you have in the root folder of your website, you probably won’t see it. The reason for this is that having to play around with php.ini is not common. But okay, the thing is, you need to do it to see if you can fix the memory exhausted error.

In case you have a php.ini already created, edit that one. Otherwise, the first thing to do is create a file called php.ini. If you are using FileZilla or a similar FTP client, right click to see the corresponding option. On the other hand, if you are using cPanel’s WebFTP, you have the option ‘New File’ in the upper left.

Next, open up php.ini and add the following code:

memory_limit = 256M; Maximum amount of memory a script may consume (256MB)
Save the changes made and reload your website. Works?

Modify .htaccess

If you still haven’t been able to fix the out of memory error, this is the last bullet you have left.

The .htaccess file is another one that has every WordPress installation. It allows you to modify some settings of your server. So go to it and edit it to add this, after ‘# END WordPress’:

php_value memory_limit 256M
Again, save the file with the modification and try to watch. Cross your fingers!

9. Locked Yourself Out Of wp-admin

Sometimes you may find yourself locked out of the WordPress Administrative Zone. This can happen if you forgot your password and don’t need to access your password recovery email. To prevent this issue & prevent users from having access to the WordPress Dashboard, or those from a specific IP, make sure to do the following steps:

1. Restrict wp-admin access with plugin

There are many ways to protect the Desktop but the plugin that offers you the most possibilities is WP Secure, with which you can limit access to wp-admin by IP or by type of user, you choose.

2. Restrict wp-admin access by IP

For this method we will use the file .htaccess. First we edit the existing one in the root folder of your site from the FTP client that you usually use or the browser of your hosting provider. If it does not exist, create it and, in any case, add the following:

<Files wp-login.php>

Order Deny, Allow

Deny from all

Allow from xx.xx.xx.xx

 Allow from xx.xx.xx.xx

</Files>

Where the xx.xx.xx.xx are the IPs that can be accessed. If you don’t know your IP you can check it here .

But we are not finished, now you go to the ‘wp-admin’ folder and create (if it does not exist) another file .htaccess inside it. In it you add the following:

Order Deny,Allow

Deny from all

Allow from xx.xx.xx.xx

Allow from xx.xx.xx.xx

Again the xx.xx.xx.xx are the authorized IPs. You save the changes and you already have it

3. Restrict access to wp-admin by code

Finally, you can also achieve the same by adding the following code to the file functions.phpof your active theme:
<?php

    function restringir_login(){

        global $current_user;

        get_currentuserinfo();

        if ($current_user->user_level <  4) { //si no es admin no entra

            wp_redirect( get_bloginfo('url') );

            exit;

        }

    }

    add_action('admin_init', 'restringir_login', 1);

?>

In this example, all users below the Administrator level (4) will not be able to access. That easy.

Temporarily remove extensions – This is because several WordPress plugins can interfere with the login process. Deactivate all of your plugins by deleting the “plugins” folder located in the / wp-content / plugins / directory (making sure to make a copy first).

If you are worried about deleting files on your server, you can optionally rename it this way / wp-content / XXplugins /, so you just have to change the name back to re-enable extensions.

Disable the theme – For this step, same process as above. You will need to go to wp-content / themes / and rename the folder. Once renamed, your site will no longer find its theme. You will quickly notice that the whole design of your website will have been turned upside down. If the problem is solved and you manage to connect to your site, then the problem comes from your theme.

Upload the wp-login.php file again – Sometimes the wp-login.php file gets corrupted. In this case, the best thing to do is to re-download a clean version of WordPress at this address: Download WordPress. Once done, get the wp-login.php file and replace your old one (on your server) with the new one (which you just downloaded).

10. WordPress login page update and redirect issue

The symptoms of this issue are that when a user tries to access the WordPress dashboard, they are redirected from WordPress to the login page.

Most of the time, this happens due to incorrect values for site URL fields and base URLs in the WordPress options table. It can also be caused by improperly configured permalink settings or setting redirects to .htaccess file.

11. Image not loading problem in WordPress

Sometimes a user suddenly notices that all the images on their site are gone and displays the placeholders of the broken images. When the user tries to upload an image to a post using the Media Upload utility, an error is thrown.

All of these files in the media library will appear as non-functional. This error is caused by incorrect permissions on files and directories during a WordPress installation. There are a number of factors that can cause this problem.

Uploading images to a WordPress site can confuse newbies with WordPress. A user may not be able to know how to align images, resize them, crop them, or view them in a gallery format.

This is not an error or a problem in WordPress. You just need to familiarize yourself with how WordPress handles media.

Log into your file manager and set the 644 permission to your wp-content folder. Check out the blog section at our website to learn more about the importance of file permissions in WordPress.

12. Unable to upload image error

. The fact cannot be denied that WordPress does a remarkable job in keeping things uncomplicated and secure; however, when you come across an HTTP error while Uploading Images to Media Library or a broken image using the built-in media uploader, all your efforts go down the drain.

Are you seeing HTTP error while uploading images, pdf, video or other media to WordPress?

HTTP error when uploading images is one of the most annoying things that can happen to your WordPress site. This problem ruins user experience and makes your website look unfriendly and outdated.

Before we dive into discussing quick fixes to solve image uploading issues, let us first get acquainted with http image upload error in wordpress and its causes.

13. “Are you sure you want to do this?” Logout Error

Users may encounter this error in the WordPress admin area. The most common cause of this error is a plugin or theme that is not using Nonce properly.

Nonces are special security keys that can be added to URLs when performing an admin action in WordPress. Sometimes a plugin or theme might not use it correctly which can cause users to see this error.

14. Site unavailable due to scheduled maintenance error in WordPress

Sometimes due to an incomplete or interrupted WordPress update, the error “Briefly not available for scheduled maintenance” may show up in WordPress.

What happens is that WordPress puts your site in maintenance mode during an update. If for some reason the update is interrupted, WordPress does not have the option of putting your site out of maintenance mode. This error would crash the entire site and make it inaccessible to administrators and visitors.

To resolve the issue, you can connect to the root folder of your site using FTP. Try to find a file named .maintenance in the root directory of your site. If you can’t see the file, make sure you’ve checked to show hidden files on your FTP client. If you are using Filezilla, you can force the display of hidden files by clicking on the Server »Force display of hidden files in the menu bar.

If you are using cPanel or other hosting plans, go to File Manager and try to find .maintenance and delete it like in the following image.

Go to Detailed Guide (Step by Step) – How To Fix WordPress struck in maintenance mode

15. Email not sending WordPress issue

The most common symptom of this issue is not receiving any WordPress contact forms or email notifications from your site.

This problem is usually caused by the fact that most shared hosting providers disable or limit the form used for sending emails to prevent misuse of their servers.

Go to Detailed Guide (Step by Step) – How To Fix Unable to send email error in WordPress

16. WordPress RSS feed error

The main reason for WordPress RSS Feed errors is poor formatting. The most likely reason for your RSS feeds to show error is poor formatting. This poor formatting can be caused by a blank space after closing PHP tag in a plugin or in your theme’s functions. php file. … The most common form of WordPress RSS Feed error is like:

XML Parsing Error: XML or text declaration not at start of entity

Location: http://example.com/feed

Line Number 2, Column 1:

Depending on the browser your RSS feed error message may vary. You can also see this error message when visiting your feed in a web browser.

Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/username/example.com/wp-content/themes/twentysixteen/functions.php:433) in /home/username/example.com/wp-includes/pluggable.php on line 1228

Depending on the browser you are using, the RSS feed error message may vary. You may also see this error message when you visit your feed in a browser.

WordPress generates RSS feeds in XML, a strict markup language. A missing line break or an extra tab may interrupt the RSS feed.

17. Forbidden 403 error in WordPress

403 Forbidden error code is displayed when server permissions do not allow access to a specific page. This is why the error is usually accompanied by the text:

There are several scenarios in which you can view this error. The most common culprits are incorrect file permissions, poorly coded security plugins, or server configuration.

Even though 403 forbidden errors on a WordPress site can be problematic, they are actually very easy to identify and fix.

There are different scenarios of this error. Like:

Access denied on wp-admin or WordPress login page.
During WordPress install.
403 Forbidden error when visiting any page on your WordPress site.
It is also possible that you only get to see ‘Access Denied’ instead of full 403 Forbidden statuses.
You may also see ‘Access to yourdomain.com was denied. You don’t have the authorization to view this page.’

18. Redirected loop error in WordPress

This error is usually caused by an incorrectly configured redirect issue. As you know, WordPress has a user-friendly URL structure that uses the redirect feature. Many other popular WordPress plugins also use the redirect feature.

If it does not resolve your problem, you can go to your “wp-config.php” and add these two lines inside your wp-config.php starting from line 2.

define(‘WP_HOME’,’http://example.com’);

define(‘WP_SITEURL’,’http://example.com’);

Instead of example.com, use your site name.

Due to a configuration error in one of these redirect tools, your site may be directed to redirect users to a URL that actually redirects them to the referring URL. In this case, the user’s browser is intercepted between two pages, causing a redirect cycle.

19. “Cannot write files to disk” Error in WordPress

This error can occur for several reasons. However, the most common permissions on folders are the most common.

Each file and folder on your website has a number of permissions. Your web server controls access to files based on these permissions. Incorrect permissions on a folder can prevent the ability to write files to the server. This means that your web server cannot create or add new files to that particular folder.

Incorrect permissions may show one of the following error messages:

WordPress failed to write file to disk error
WordPress has failed to upload due to an error failed to write file to disk
Unable to create directory wp-content/uploads/2016/03. Is its parent directory writable by the server?

20. “This site contains malware in advance” Error in WordPress?

Google alerts a website to this warning if it detects suspicious code that could be malware, ransomware, phishing attack or a Trojan horse. Sometimes the reason is that your website has been hacked and is now being used to distribute malicious code.

Another common reason for this error is showing ads from low-quality ad networks. These networks can sometimes display ads that refer to websites spreading malicious code. This can also lead to google ads suspension due to malicious code. and you may see your site may be hacked message in google

21. Missed post error in WordPress?

WordPress has this wonderful feature that allows you to schedule posts to be automatically published at a specific time. Most bloggers look to the future to manage their editorial programming.

However, sometimes WordPress can lose scheduled posts for a number of reasons. If this has happened to you more than once or twice, you need to fix this here.

22. Fatal Error: Maximum Execution Time Exceeded in WordPress?

WordPress is coded primarily in the PHP programming language. To protect web servers from abuse, there is a time limit that a PHP script can be executed.

Some WordPress hosting providers have set this value to a higher level, while others may have set it to a lower level. When a script hits the maximum execution time limit, a maximum execution time error is exceeded.

23. Facebook incorrect thumbnail issue in WordPress

There are many reasons that can prevent Facebook from correctly guessing the correct preview image. One of the most common reasons is to have multiple images defined in the open graph : image tag where the foreground image is smaller than the rest of the images.

Facebook uses Open Graph (og) tags and plugins like Yoast SEO automatically adds them to your site to avoid the missing thumbnail issue.

24. WordPress Keeps Logging out Issue

WordPress sets a cookie in the browser to authenticate an access session. This cookie is set for the WordPress URL stored in the settings section. If you access a URL that does not match the one defined in your WordPress settings, WordPress will not be able to authenticate your session.

Go to Detailed Guide (Step by Step) – How To Fix Logout Error in WordPress

25. Mixed content error in WordPress

Mixed content errors are caused by HTTP / SSL Settings errors on your WordPress site. They may or may not affect the functionality of your website, but may affect your website’s SEO and user experience.

Basically, on an SSL enabled website, all resources should be loaded using an HTTP URL. Your site can contain content with an HTTP URL, or a plugin or theme can download a file with HTTP. This causes a mixed content error because these resources are not loaded using a secure protocol.

To resolve this issue, you must determine which resources are loaded insecurely, and then correct their URLs. You can do this with a plugin or you can do it manually.

26. Add Media button not working in WordPress?

The Add Media button in WordPress post-publish screens uses JavaScript to launch the media library and uploader. However, sometimes a conflict or theme code conflict with the WordPress core can prevent JavaScript from working.

WordPress combines all the scripts in the WordPress administrative area to improve performance. One plugin or theme script can interfere with the functioning of other code in the script.

To Fix WordPress Add Media Button Not Working:

Using the FTP server access your WordPress root directory and open “wp-config.php “file for editing.

Now just add the following code to just before the line that says “That’s all, stop editing! Happy blogging.”

define(‘CONCATENATE_SCRIPTS’, false);Copy

Save changes to your “wp-config.php” file. Log out from your WordPress site and clear all of your caches i.e. browser, plugin, 3rd-party, and server cache.
Log in back to your WordPress admin dashboard and check if the Add Media button is working.

27. Bad Gateway 502 error in WordPress?

502 Bad Gateway Error is another staggering error that could appear on your WordPress website. This is usually because a user’s request to a server is taking too long to process without giving further errors.

This delay may be a temporary technical problem caused by heavy traffic. It could also be caused by a badly coded WordPress theme or plugin. Last but not least, improper server configuration can also generate this error.

28. Service 503 not available Error in WordPress?

The 503 “service not available” error is often caused by an unreactive PHP script. It could be an incorrect WordPress plugin, theme, or custom snippet.

It can also be triggered by heavy server load, server problem, or glitch. brute force attack. In this case, it may disappear automatically in a few minutes. If that doesn’t go away, you will need to fix it.

Go to Detailed Guide (Step by Step) – How To Fix 503 Internal Server Error WordPress

29. 504 gateway timeout error in WordPress?

The 504 gateway timeout error is often caused by processing a request to the server through a proxy or firewall, with no ability to connect to the upstream server.

504 gateway timeout can come in different shapes and sizes. For example:

504 Gateway Timeout nginx
Gateway Timeout Error
HTTP Error 504
504 Gateway Time-out – The server didn’t respond in time
HTTP Error 504 – Gateway Timeout

You are more likely to see this error if you are using a WordPress firewall

Go to Detailed Guide (Step by Step) – How To Fix 500 Internal Server Error WordPress

30. Unable to open feed WordPress error

The “Unable to open feed” error occurs when WordPress fails to load a file mentioned in the website code. Sometimes WordPress will continue to load the site and only show a warning message, while other times it will result in a fatal error.

The error message may differ depending on where the error occurred in the code and its cause. In each case, the opening of the failed flow sentence was followed by a pattern. For example, permission denied, no files or directories, the operation failed, etc.

31. WordPress error – 429 Too many requests

The 429 error is a preventative measure to protect servers from abuse. This error occurs when a bot, script, or user sends too many requests to the server.

However, if not configured correctly, it can prevent search engines and other APIs from accessing your website. To resolve this issue, you need to find the code, plugin, or service malfunction that caused the error.

32. Requested entity 413 Error too big in WordPress?

Normally, most WordPress hosting companies have their own servers set up, so WordPress users can easily upload large images and other media. However, sometimes this setting is not high enough to load large theme files or plugins.

It also prevents you from uploading large files to the media library. In this case, you will see a different message, which clearly states that the file size exceeds the maximum allowed limit.

Wrapping up Common WordPress Error

The issues mentioned above are some of the most common mistakes when using WordPress. Other than that, there are a lot more wordpress tips & tricks you may find useful..

But before resolving any of the above mentioned common wordpress errors, one should make sure that the WordPress backup is taken frequently. Otherwise, there is a risk of data loss.

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40 Most Common WordPress Errors & Issues – 2024 [UPDATED]