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7 Common WordPress Errors and How To Fix Them

According to statistics, WordPress is the most popular content management system in the world with a market share of 60%. Not only that, WordPress powers 42.7% of websites (a total of 708 million sites) on the internet and 17% of top websites in the world. All these numbers do not mean that it is perfect. It has its flaws and most WordPress website administrators know that very well. They must deal with errors and security and privacy issues from time to time.

In this article, you will learn about seven common WordPress errors and how you can fix them.

1.    Database Connection Problems

There are instances when your WordPress website cannot connect with your database where all the content is stored. As a result, WordPress fail to serve content to your website visitors and displays this error. To fix this problem, you need to go to your WordPress dashboard and use the WordPress repair tool. This tool checks if your database is corrupt or not.

If that does not work, go to your wp-config.php and check whether your account credentials match with cPanel or not. If everything is OK, you can contact your hosting provider as they might be experiencing some technical issues due to which your WordPress website is struggling to establish a connection with your database. Talk to customer support and they can also help you in troubleshooting the problem.

2.    White Screen of Death

Most of us are familiar with the blue screen of death as we grew up using Windows operating systems on our computers. Did you know there is also a white screen of death? It’s on WordPress and shares few characteristics from the blue screen of death.

If you have ever seen the white screen of death on WordPress, you might be wondering where my website went and how can I get it back. There is not a common cause for this error but in most cases, this happens due to PHP and database errors. To fix this, you need to keep an eye on themes and plugin related issues. Deactivate all your plugins and themes if you find that these themes and plugins are the main reason behind the problem.  If this is not caused by a theme or plugin then, you should consider increasing WordPress memory limit. If that does not work, you should use the debugging tool by adding define ( ‘WP_DEBUG’, true ) to wp-config.php file.

Related Reading: WordPress Broken Admin issue (Fix)

3.    Internal Server Errors

Internal server errors are usually caused by catchall error messages which indicates a problem with your server but there can be many different causes for it. Due to this, you should take a comprehensive approach to resolve this issue. Here are some things you can do to fix the internal server errors.

  • Reupload wp-admin and other folders
  • Increase memory limit
  • Disable all your plugins
  • Use default theme
  • Fix your corrupted htaccess file

You can download a fresh copy Of WordPress and upload wp-admin and other folders again or try to fix the corrupted htaccess file. For this, you will have to establish an FTP connection and change the name of your htaccess file. Go to settings and permalinks to save the permalinks so that WordPress generates a new htaccess file and replaces the corrupted file with a newly created file. You can reactivate plugins when you need them. Same goes for themes and other elements.

4.    Parse and Syntax Errors

Parse and syntax errors occur when there is an error in your PHP code. This usually happens when you try to add code in your functions’ file, but it can also be caused by a plugin or theme in some cases. Your server will not only tell you the main reason behind this error, but it also indicates the code line number that is causing the problem, which makes your life easier.

In most cases, such errors occur soon after you have made some changes so you can easily fix this error by reverting those changes. If that is not the case, then you should establish a connection with a FTP and delete the line of code which is causing all the problems.

5.    Connection Timed Out

Nothing is more frustrating for a user than to see a connection timed out error. This error mostly occurs due to poor shared hosting environments with low memory limits. That is you should choose a hosting provider like you choose a design company. If you have purchased a shared hosting and the server your website is hosted on fails to respond to all the requests, a connection timeout message will pop up on the user screen who will try to access your website.

Start off by deactivating all the plugins and reactivate your plugins one by one to identify which plugin is causing the problem. You can also consider switching hosting providers, get an upgraded plan or switch to a dedicated server.

6.    404 Error

Another annoying type of error that commonly occurs on WordPress websites is 404 error. Mostly, these 404 errors occur due to misconfigured permalinks settings or htaccess file. Go to settings and reset your permalinks in your permalink’s settings. If that does not resolve the problem, you can try renaming your htaccess file by connecting to a FTP especially if you are not able to access your WordPress dashboard.

7.    Caught Up In Maintenance Mode

WordPress users are bound to face issues when they try to update their WordPress version. To prevent any issues, WordPress tends to automatically turn on the maintenance mode during the installation of updates. This allows your website users to have a normal experience instead of a broken one due to updates.

Even though this process works normally in most cases but there are instances where your WordPress website does not come out of maintenance mode and get stuck in it. Thankfully, you can easily fix this problem by establishing a FTP connection and deleting the maintenance file, which is located in the root directory of your website.

Which WordPress errors do you face? Let us know in the comments section below.

Irfan Ak is a digital marketing strategist & a guest blogger on various websites. He is currently associated with Branex Inc which is leading Toronto web design company He has worked with various other brands and created value for them

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