How to Fix Plugin incompatibilities in WordPress
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How to Fix Plugin incompatibilities in WordPress

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WordPress is a flexible CMS. Its support for themes, plugins, and third-party scripts sometimes results in incompatibilities.

Fixing conflict issues can be a headache for beginners. This article will explore common ways to fix plugin incompatibilities in WordPress.

So, let’s start without further ado.

How to Fix Plugin incompatibilities in WordPress?

Before proceeding, make sure you’ve taken site backups. For more information on backups in WordPress, see this detailed tutorial. For backups, you can use a no-code, point-and-click WordPress plugin, such as Up Draft Plus.

1. Basic precautions

First, check whether or not the underlying core is compatible with a plugin.

To proceed, ensure you’ve seen official resources, knowledge base, and recommendations for installed plugins. You can ask for quick support if you’re using a premium plugin.

Further, ensure you’ve updated the WordPress core, dependencies required, or new versions for updates, patches, and new features.

2. Error Messages

In WordPress, error messages are helpful in A/B testing. WordPress error statements help admins understand what’s happening to WordPress.

In this case, errors like “briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance” indicate incomplete updating events in WordPress. In such scenarios, if a plugin, theme, or script fails to update correctly, WordPress shows such error messages.

Once you’ve seen an error statement, you can proceed and take your first step to fix WordPress incompatibilities issues in WordPress.

3. Run A/B Testing

A/B Testing helps users test various workflows before applying them to a Live website. It also allows admins to avoid uninviting issues, such as plugin incompatibilities.

To proceed further, here is what you should consider.

An entire A/B testing routine requires a staging website – a regular site that helps admins test various experiments. If, on the other hand – you’re unable to create a staging environment – here is what you should do instead.

Deactivate each plugin individually to see if the problem has been fixed. Once you identify the culprit plugin, you can better decide what to do next.

4. New installations

Sometimes, WordPress becomes uncomfortable with new themes, plugins, and 3rd party integrations.

If you’ve experienced such gaps, you should see if switching to a default theme fixes the problem. To proceed if you need to clone existing installation(s) on a staging site, proceed.

The themes supplied in the WordPress core are known as “defaults.” Twenty Twenty Twenty-Two is an example of a WordPress default theme.

This routine helps you quickly determine if the new theme is causing conflicts in WordPress. Alternatively, see the official recommendations on vendors’ sites.

5. Problems due to cache

Caching helps site owners increase page speed. Whenever a page is cached in WordPress, the server doesn’t generate a new version for requests but quickly presents the cached version.

As WordPress supports caching, it can cause problems – too.

First, see if clearing the browser’s cache solves the problem. You can also test WordPress, which is a different browser.

If that is not helpful, try clearing the cache in the WordPress dashboard. This will help you clear the cache in the plugin used to speed up WordPress pages.

Alternatively, if none of the steps work, ask web hosting support agents to clear the server cache.

If you don’t see the difference after clearing all cache instances, you should now seek out other possible reasons for plugin conflicts in WordPress.

6. JavaScript Errors

Sometimes, JavaScript used on WordPress pages causes errors, incompatibilities, and gaps.

JavaScript is commonly used in WordPress. Indeed, the core files of themes and plugins include JavaScript files.

To see if a page rendering causes JavaScript errors, here is what you should do.

Load the page in the browser and right-click on it to show the short menu. Select the “Inspect Element” option to proceed. You can use your favorite browsers, such as Mozilla Firefox, Opera, or Google Chrome, for this purpose.

Navigate to the “Console” tab and see if errors are displayed. Here, you can spot red-colored text for errors.

Errors shown on the Console Tab are caused by JavaScript rendering. Here, you can see the file name and line number where the error has occurred.

Proceed and track down specific areas to fix issues. This routine can help you find out the culprit plugins in WordPress.

7. PHP Memory

WordPress runs on PHP. The WordPress core, theme files, and plugin assets – are all made of PHP scripts.

So, the plugins used in WordPress are made of PHP files, too.

In this case, a server’s infrastructure is specially crafted to render WordPress assets. Here comes a case.

On shared hosting servers, memory for rendering PHP scripts is limited. If a plugin surpasses PHP memory limits, plugin incompatibilities occur.

In such scenarios, contact your hosting support channel for more information. Generally, if you’re experiencing memory limits, upgrading to premium support or plans is the only option.

Tips and Precautions

  • Remember—having fewer plugins in WordPress is always better. More plugins invite errors, incompatibilities/issues, and slow page speed problems in WordPress.
  • Sometimes, users can increase the PHP memory limit via the wp-config.php file. For more information on how to proceed, read the official resource on Google.
  • Run A/B testing on a staging environment. A staging site helps users avoid uninviting errors when errors, maintenance issues, and expected problems occur.
  • Removing plugin conflicts best suits WordPress developers. So, if you don’t know how to proceed, don’t change WordPress.
  • Always take site backups before you make any changes. A backup plan helps admins restore WordPress if something unusual, uninviting, or sudden happens. Fortunately, WordPress supports point-and-click backup options.

Final Thoughts

How to fix plugin incompatibilities in WordPress?

Removing plugin incompatibilities is a technical procedure.

In this resource, we’ve outlined common ways to fix plugin incompatibilities in WordPress.

Here is what you should consider if things get serious.

  • As described above, developers’ assistance is better than guesswork.
  • A/B testing on a staging site is always helpful.

Still, if you need expertise to step forward, let us know the problem. We can help.

Let us know if you need more information on maintaining WordPress, removing common errors, improving page speed, or monitoring performance.

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