Table of Contents
Although WordPress is a stable and reliable platform for building your website, there are occasions when you may need help with a few problems. Like with every form of technology, things can occasionally go haywire.
We’ve identified six common WordPress issues you may face and their reasons.
1. The white screen of death
Perhaps the scariest issue of them all is the white screen of death, which occurs when you access your website and see nothing but a blank page. Most of the time, this happens because a theme or plugin is incompatible with another plugin.
To determine whether a plugin is responsible, you need to isolate your plugin’s directory and then activate the plugin files individually to check which is causing the problem. Once the incriminated plugin gets disabled, your website should be back up and running.
2. Connection timed out
This error appears when your server is overloaded and your website tries to do more than it can manage. You may need to increase your memory limit. However, if you are on a shared host, there may be limitations beyond a certain point.
Another place to look is with your plugins or theme. Again, deactivating your plugins is the quickest way to see whether they are responsible for the error. You can then reactivate them individually to see which is causing the issue. If the plugins aren’t the problem, you could try changing your theme to the default WP theme to see if that fixes the error.
3. Images don’t scale properly
One of the most frustrating things about WordPress is when the images you want to use won’t scale properly or they don’t align as you want them to.
Although most WordPress themes allow you to align images via the WordPress editor, some may not let you position them so that they float to the left or right. If this happens, there may be a lack of styling in the CSS. In this case, you must edit the code to fix the issue.
4. Internal server error
The most common cause of an Internal Server Error message is a corrupt .htaccess file. It could also be a conflicting plugin or theme. You will need FTP access on your server to access the .htaccess file. Once the file has been located, you can rename it and generate a new .htaccess file if that is the issue.
You could also try deactivating and reactivating your plugins and themes to see if that removes the error. If that still doesn’t work, try increasing the PHP Memory Limit.
5. Locked out of admin error
You may be locked out of your account if you need to remember your WordPress website’s password or login name. The problem can become even worse if, for some reason, your recovery email doesn’t work.
If you can’t access the backend, you can reset your password inside the database via PhpMyAdmin. Once you’ve found your username, delete whatever is written in the field called user_pass and write your new password. You should now be able to access your site.
6. Comment spam
As a website owner, it’s great to see growth in incoming traffic, but the downside is that when your site gains traction, the number of spam comments it receives also increases. Most spam comments come from automated spam bots; if you don’t moderate them, they can reduce your SEO score and significantly slow down your site.
The best way to stop spam comments is to configure your settings so that you can approve each comment manually. Comments can also be marked as spam automatically if they contain banned words. You can read more about spam comment cleansing here.
If you need emergency WordPress help or support to get your website back up and running, contact WP Tech Support. Our team of WordPress developers is available 24/7 and will quickly diagnose the problem and figure out the best way to get your website back on track.