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WordPress always breaks in the same half a dozen ways. This page exists to save you the searching: find your symptom in the table and go straight to the article that deals with it.
| Three rules before touching anything, whatever the fault. First: take a backup, always, before the first step (how to restore your data). Second: change one thing at a time and test after each one. Third: write down what you changed. Nearly every fault that reaches support in a bad state started with five changes in a row and nobody knowing which of them did it. |
The site will not open, or opens badly
| What you see | Where the answer is |
| Blank page, or «critical error» | Common WordPress errors: white screen and critical error |
| An error with a number: 500, 404, 508 | Website errors explained: 500, 403, 404 and 508 |
| 403 Forbidden | Error 403 Forbidden: permissions, .htaccess and blocked IPs |
| «Error establishing a database connection» | Error establishing a database connection: the causes, in order |
| I lost or broke wp-config.php | Rebuilding the wp-config.php connection |
| I do not know which database belongs to the site | Finding out which database this WordPress uses |
| PHP warnings printed on the page | PHP warnings showing on your site |
| Stuck in «scheduled maintenance» | Common WordPress errors, in the .maintenance section |
| The site has never opened since I registered the domain | Registered the domain and it still does not open |
I cannot sign in, or there is no padlock
| What you see | Where the answer is |
| /wp-admin will not let me in | Cannot get into the WordPress dashboard |
| The browser says the connection is not secure | No padlock on your site: the causes, in order |
| My IP has been blocked | How to unblock your IP address and why your IP gets blocked |
| I want to shut the door properly | Protecting the WordPress login |
| I want to move the login address | Changing the WordPress login address |
| I want a captcha on the login | Putting a captcha on the WordPress login |
| I want the whole site on https | Moving your site to https with Really Simple SSL |
It is slow, or it is hitting limits
| What you see | Where the answer is |
| The site drags | The site is slow: what actually makes a difference |
| Do I need a bigger plan? | What to measure before you change plan and the limits nobody advertises |
| I cannot upload a large file | PHP limits: memory, time and upload size |
| Scheduled tasks that never run | Cron jobs |
| I want to see where the time goes | Monitoring your site performance in cPanel |
| I want to turn on a page cache | Installing and tuning a page cache |
| admin-ajax is all over the access log | admin-ajax eating your resources |
| «Allowed memory size exhausted» | Giving WordPress more memory |
| The database is full of rubbish | Cleaning and optimising the database in phpMyAdmin |
| Scheduled posts go out late, or not at all | Swapping WP-Cron for a real server cron job |
The site does not send e-mail
| What you see | Where the answer is |
| Form messages never arrive anywhere | A contact form that actually reaches your inbox |
| WordPress sends nothing at all, not even password recovery | Making WordPress send e-mail properly, with SMTP and why your e-mail is not sending or receiving |
| They arrive, but land in spam | SPF, DKIM and DMARC and how to write an e-mail that does not land in spam |
| I need a mailbox on the domain | How to create an e-mail account in cPanel |
I suspect a break-in, or I want to go back
| What you see | Where the answer is |
| The site shows things I did not put there | How to tell if your site has been compromised |
| I have confirmed it | How to clean up a compromised site |
| I want yesterday’s version back | Restoring a backup yourself and how long we keep backups |
| I want a copy of my own, off the server | Making and keeping your own backup |
| I want to wipe it and start again | How to remove WordPress from a domain |
The rule that solves half the cases
If you do not know where to start and the site broke after something, the answer is nearly always to undo that something. Updated a plugin? Deactivate it. Changed the theme? Go back to the previous one. Changed the PHP version? Switch back on the same screen. A site that was fine yesterday and is broken today broke because of something that happened in between, and that something usually has a name.
| Before touching what is live, rehearse elsewhere. That goes double for big updates and theme changes: a test site before touching what is live. |
Where our work ends and yours begins is written in how far our support goes.
| And if the site is not broken, you just want it better? The three with the biggest payback are turning on a page cache, cleaning the database and getting e-mail delivery working properly. If you are building pages, using Elementor. |
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Cannot find your case in this list? Describe the symptom and the address of the page. Open a request |
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SEE ALSO |
RECOMMENDED PRODUCT WordPress hosting One-click install, updates handled, and speed that holds up. See plans |
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