WordPress troubleshooting

Overview: Whilst we offer paid service and troubleshooting for WordPress, we're happy to provide these free suggestions for self-help at no charge. The following suggestions are undertaken at your own risk.

Information you will require

Recommended tools

The free and opensource FTP client FileZilla https://filezilla-project.org

The free MySQL database client Workbench https://dev.mysql.com/downloads/workbench

How to connect to a database: https://dev.mysql.com/doc/workbench/en/wb-mysql-connections.html (See https://developer.wordpress.org/apis/wp-config-php/ for how to extract the database server/user/pass from wp-config.php file).

Common causes and solutions

In this article we will briefly walk through solving the following common problems causing WordPress issues:

• Cache
• Server settings
• Plugins
• Themes
• Other (how to enable DEBUG mode)
• Version (how to overwrite ["manual upgrade"] WordPress core version)

CACHE

The "cache" could contain a deleted item or mis-configured older copy of an object

Using FTP, navigate to the "WP-Content" folder

Delete all contents (files/sub-folders) from the "cache" sub-folder

Re-test site.

SERVER SETTINGS

The ".htaccess" file could contain invalid server settings

Using FTP, navigate to the file ".htaccess" and rename ".htaccess-DISABLED"

Re-test site.

PLUGIN

A "plugin" could be incompatible or misconfigured

Using FTP, navigate to the "WP-Content" folder

Create a new folder "plugins-DISABLED"

Move ALL of the sub-folders within the original "plugins" folder to "plugins-DISABLED"

Test access to site, and if now working move 1 plugin (sub-folder) back into the "plugins" folder and re-test, until you locate the plugin that is causing the issue.

THEME

A "theme" could be incompatible or misconfigured

Using FTP, navigate to the "WP-Content" folder

Create a new folder "themes-DISABLED"

Move ALL of the sub-folders within the original "themes" folder to "themes-DISABLED"

Test access to site, and if now working move 1 theme (sub-folder) back into the "themes" folder and re-test, until you locate the theme that is causing the issue.

OTHER

Other issues could be the cause - enable DEBUGGING to show the error messages

Using FTP, navigate to the file "wp-config.php" and copy to your local computer

Edit the local file in Notepad (or similar text editor), searching for "WP_DEBUG" such as:

define( 'WP_DEBUG', false );

Change "false" to "true", save the file and upload back to the server using FTP.

Re-test the site and look carefully onscreen for any specific error messages.

IMPORTANT: Once resolved, be sure to disable debugging (set "true" to "false").

VERSION

WordPress version may no longer be supported by the server

If you still cannot log into WordPress admin even after exhausting the above techniques, you can try a manual upgrade. Manually upgrade to latest version of WordPress by overwriting with latest file versions, as follows:

Download and extract latest version from https://wordpress.org/download/

Using FTP, navigate to the root folder, such as "htdocs"

Rename folders "wp-admin" and "wp-includes" by appending "_OLD" to the folder names

Rename file "wp-config.php" by appending "_OLD"

Upload (and overwrite) latest WordPress files and folders (inside the "wordpress" folder) to the FTP website root (such as "htdocs") EXCEPT the following:

    Folder "wp-content"

Rename file "wp-config.php" by appending "_NEW"

Rename original file "wp-config.php_OLD" by removing appendage "_OLD"

(The wp-config.php file contains the database settings, without it the site would install fresh WordPress installation and all content would be inaccessible)

Re-test site.

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