Topics

  • The White Screen of Death
  • Internal Server Error
  • Mistake Establishing Database Connection
    • Wrong wp-config.php Information
    • Problems with Your Web Host
    • Compromised Website
  • Failed Machine-Upgrade
  • Connection Timed Out
  • Maintenance Mode Following Upgrade
  • You Make Changes and Nada Happens
  • Pretty Permalinks 404 and Images non Working
  • Custom Post Blazon 404 Errors
  • Specific Error Letters
    • PHP Errors
      • Fatal Errors and Warnings
      • Parse errors
      • Utilise of an undefined abiding
    • Database Errors
      • Error 13 – Cannot Create/Write to File
      • CREATE Command Denied to User
      • Error 28
      • Fault 145
      • Unknown Column
    • Resource

If you are encountering a WordPress mistake message or white screen, don't panic. Someone has likely encountered the same bulletin before and it tin easily be solved.

This page lists the virtually common WordPress errors experienced past WordPress users, and provides a starting signal for fixing them. At WordPress Support, yous will also discover links to more than detailed pages or forums where a volunteer will be at that place to help.

The White Screen of Death

Both PHP errors and database errors can manifest as a white screen, a blank screen with no information, ordinarily known in the WordPress community as the WordPress White Screen of Expiry (WSOD).

Earlier resorting to desperate measures, at that place are a number of reasons for the WordPress white screen of decease:

  • A Plugin is causing compatibility problems. If you can access the Assistants Screens try deactivating all of your Plugins and and then reactivating them 1 by one. If y'all are unable to access your Screens, log in to your website via FTP. Locate the folder wp-content/plugins and rename the Plugin folder plugins_old. This will deactivate all of your Plugins. You lot can read more about manually deactivating your plugins in the Troubleshooting FAQ.
  • Your Theme may exist causing the trouble. This is especially likely if you are experiencing the white screen of death later on you lot have just activated a new Theme, or created a New Site in a WordPress Network. Log in to the WordPress Administration Screens and activate a default WordPress Theme (e.g. Xx Twenty-I). If you lot are using WordPress five.8 and beneath, please switch to Xx Twenty-I theme since the Twenty Xx-2 theme requires 5.9 and above. If you tin't access your Administration Screens, access your website via FTP and navigate to the /wp-content/themes/ binder. Rename the folder for the active Theme.

The WP_DEBUG feature often provides additional data.

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Internal Server Error

Internal Server Error message

There tin can be a number of reasons for an Internal Server Error. Here are some thing y'all tin exercise to solve it:

  • The about likely effect is a corrupted .htaccess file. Log in to your site root using FTP and rename your .htaccess file to .htaccess_old. Try loading your site to see if this has solved your problem. If it works, brand sure to visit Settings > Permalinks and reset your permalinks. This will generate a new .htaccess file for you.
  • Effort deactivating all of your Plugins to see if information technology is a Plugin result. If you lot are unable to access your WordPress Assistants Screens, conciliate your Plugins via FTP past post-obit these instructions.
  • Switch the Theme to a WordPress default Theme (e.g. Xx Twenty-One) to eliminate whatever Theme-related problems. If you lot are using WordPress five.8 and below, please switch to Xx Twenty-One theme since the Twenty Xx-Ii theme requires 5.9 and above.
  • Increase the PHP Memory limit
  • Try re-uploading the wp-admin and wp-includes folders from a fresh install of WordPress.

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Error Establishing Database Connection

If you get a page featuring the message "Error Establishing Database Connection," this ways that there is a problem with the connection to your database and there could exist a number of reasons for this. The following are possible reasons and solutions.

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Incorrect wp-config.php Data

"Error establishing a database connexion" is usually caused by an error in your wp-config.php file. Access your site in your FTP client. Open upward wp-config.php and ensure that the following are right:

  • Database proper noun
  • Database username
  • Database password
  • Database host

Learn more than about editing wp-config.php.

If yous are sure your configuration is correct yous could try resetting your MySQL password manually.

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Issues with Your Spider web Host

The next step is to contact your web host. The following hosting issues may be causing the problem:

  • Your database has met its quota and has been shut down.
  • The server is downwardly.

Contact your hosting provider to come across if either of these problems is causing your problem.

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Compromised Website

If you have checked wp-config.php for errors, and confirmed with your host for hosting issues, information technology is possible that your site has been hacked.

Scan your site with Sucuri SiteCheck to ensure that information technology hasn't been compromised. If it has you should cheque out My Site was Hacked.

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Failed Automobile-Upgrade

There will be situations when the WordPress motorcar-update feature fails. Symptoms include:

  • A blank white screen and no information.
  • A warning that the update failed.
  • A PHP error message.

The WordPress automated upgrade feature may neglect due to a glitch in the connection with the main WordPress files, a problem with your Internet connection during upgrade, or incorrect File Permissions

To update your WordPress site manually, see the Manual Update commodity.

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Connection Timed Out

The connexion timed out error appears when your website is trying to exercise more than your server tin manage. It is specially mutual on shared hosting where your memory limit is restricted. Here are some things you can endeavor:

  • Deactivate all Plugins. If deactivating all the WordPress Plugins on your site resolves the issue, reactivate them one-by-ane to see which plugin is causing the trouble. If yous are unable to access your Administration Screens, read about how to manually conciliate your plugins.
  • Switch to a default WordPress Theme. If you are using WordPress 5.viii and below, please switch to Twenty Twenty-One theme since the Xx Twenty-Two theme requires 5.9 and above. This should dominion out whatsoever Theme-related problems.
  • Increment your retention limit in wp-config.php. If you are on shared hosting you may have to ask your hosting provider to increase your memory limit for you lot.
  • Increment the maximum execution fourth dimension in your php.ini file. This is not a WordPress core file and then if you are non sure how to edit it, contact your hosting provider to ask them to increase your maximum execution time. See beneath instructions for increasing maximum execution time.

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Maintenance Manner Following Upgrade

When WordPress updates, it automatically installs a .maintenance file. Following upgrade, you may receive a message that says "Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Delight bank check back in a minute." The maintenance file may not accept been removed properly.

To remove this message do the following:

  1. Log in to your website using your FTP programme
  2. Delete the .maintenance file, which will exist found in your site root.

Read more about the maintenance way event.

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You lot Brand Changes and Nothing Happens

If you are making changes to your website and you lot do non encounter the changes in your browser, you may need to clear your browser cache. Your browser stores information nearly the websites that you visit. This makes it faster to load websites when you visit them because the browser just has to reload information already stored on your computer, rather than downloading information technology again.

If you make a change to a website and the browser does not think it is meaning, it will simply load the data from your cache, and you lot won't come across your changes. To fix the problem, simply empty your browser cache or close the tab and reopen the link.

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If you are experiencing 404 errors with pretty permalinks and a white screen when you upload images, mod_rewrite may non be enabled in Apache by default. Mod_rewrite is an extension module of the Apache web server software which allows for "rewriting" of URLs on-the-fly. It's what you demand to make pretty permalinks piece of work.

WordPress Multisite networks usually feel this only information technology can too occur on shared hosting providers or later on a site migration or server motion.

Reset your permalinks through Settings > Permalinks. If this does not piece of work, you may have to edit the .htaccess file manually.

# Begin WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^alphabetize\.php$ - [50]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# End WordPress

If yous are not familiar with editing your .htaccess file, contact your hosting provider to ask them to plough on mod_rewrite rules. There is more information on pretty permalinks in the WordPress Codex.

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Custom Mail Type 404 Errors

You may feel bug with 404 errors and custom post types. Try the following steps:

  1. Make sure that none of your Custom Post Types and single pages have the aforementioned name. If they do, rename the single folio, including the slug.
  2. Log in to your WordPress Administration Screens, navigate to Settings > Permalinks. Select the default permalinks. Salvage. Then reselect your preferred permalinks. This will flush the rewrite rules and should solve your problem.

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Specific Error Messages

There are a number of different errors that will announced in your error logs. To admission your error logs yous will need to turn on debugging and and so locate your error log via FTP. The following information will help you to decipher some of the mutual mistake letters.

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PHP Errors

Below are some mutual PHP error letters.

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Fatal Errors and Warnings

If you receive a warning that WordPress cannot modify header data and headers are already sent, it unremarkably ways that you have spaces or characters before the opening tags or subsequently the closing tags. Read how to fix the headers already sent mistake.

If yous are experiencing this trouble when you take only installed WordPress yous may have introduced a syntax error into wp-config.php. These instructions will assistance you to fix the error.

Call to undefined function

An error reading call to undefined role could mean that a WordPress Plugin is trying to find a file or data which isn't nowadays or attainable in the code. Reasons for this include:

  • An fault when trying to automobile-install or auto-upgrade a Plugin. Try installing or upgrading the Plugin manually.
  • An error when trying to auto-install or machine-upgrade a Theme. Try installing or upgrading the Theme manually.
  • You may be using an incompatible WordPress Plugin or incompatible Theme. This could happen with older versions of WordPress and a new WordPress Plugin, or if you are trying to use a WordPress Multisite Plugin on a unmarried site installation. Upgrade WordPress to resolve this issue.
  • You may be trying to call a function that doesn't be. Check functions.php for misspellings.

Attempt deactivating the WordPress Plugin or changing the WordPress Theme that acquired the error to announced. If you are unable to do this from inside the Administration Screens, you may have to do this manually via FTP.

Allowed retentiveness size wearied

An Allowed Memory Size Exhausted mistake means that your WordPress installation doesn't have enough retentiveness to achieve what you desire. You tin endeavour out the following steps:

  • Increase your retention limit in wp-config.php
  • Increase your retentivity limit by editing php.ini. This is not a file that comes with WordPress so if you are unfamiliar with it you should contact your web host about increasing your memory limit.
Maximum execution time exceeded

You may receive a message such as "Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded" or "Maximum execution time of 60 seconds exceeded". This means that information technology is taking to longer for a process to complete and it is timing out. There are a number of ways to fix this mistake.

Editing .htaccess

Make sure y'all back up .htaccess earlier you edit it.

Add the following line to .htaccess:

php_value max_execution_time lx

Editing php.ini

Add the following to php.ini 

max_execution_time = 60

If you lot are unsure of how to make these changes, or if you are on shared hosting that prevents y'all from making them yourself, you should contact your hosting provider and enquire them to increase your maximum execution fourth dimension.

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Parse errors

Syntax Error

A syntax error means that y'all have made a error while creating your PHP structure. You could, for example, exist;

  • Missing a ; at the finish of an individual line.
  • Using curly quotation marks.
  • Missing a curly bracket.

When this error appears it will tell y'all which file the error appears in (functions.php for case) and approximately which line (it may not ever exist the exact line so be certain to cheque just before and simply afterwards) in the code.

Unexpected

If you are receiving an mistake which says 'parse error: unexpected' this commonly means that you lot have forgotten to include a character. The most common are:

  • Unexpected '=' : you take forgotten to include the $ when referencing a variable
  • Unexpected ')' : y'all have forgotten to include the opening bracket (
  • Unexpected '(' : yous have forgotten to include the closing bracket )
  • Unexpected T_STRING: you have forgotten a quotation marker or a semi-colon at the end of the previous line
  • Unexpected T_ELSE: you take an else statement with no opening if statement

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Use of an undefined constant

As with parse errors, "use of an undefined constant" ways that you are missing a grapheme. Information technology could exist i of the following:

  • Missing a $ when referencing a viariable
  • Missing quotation marks effectually array keys

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Database Errors

The following errors may appear in relation to your WordPress database.

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Fault 13 – Cannot Create/Write to File

There are a number of reasons why you lot may be experiencing this fault.

MySQL cannot create a temporary file.

The MySQL variable tmpdir is gear up to a directory that cannot be written to when using PHP to access MySQL. To verify this, enter MySQL at the command line and blazon show variables. You'll go a long list and one of them will read: tmpdir = /somedir/ (whatever your setting is.)

To solve this, alter the tmpdir variable to point to a writable directory.

  1. Find the my.cnf file. On *nix systems this is usually in /etc/. On Windows system, Detect the my.ini.
  2. Once found, open this in a uncomplicated text editor and find the [mysqld] section.
  3. Under this section, detect the tmpdir line. If this line is commented (has a # at the start), delete the # and edit the line so that it reads: tmpdir = /writable/dir where /writable/dir is a directory to which yous can write. Some employ /tmp, or you might also try /var/tmp or /usr/tmp. On Windows, use C:/Windows/tmp.
  4. Save the file.
  5. Shutdown MySQL by typing mysqlshutdown -u -p shutdown.
  6. Start MySQL by going to the MySQL directory and typing ./bin/safe_mysqld &. Usually the MySQL directory is in /usr/local or sometimes in /usr/ on Linux systems.

The file permissions are incorrect

Correct the File Permissions.

If none of this make sense and you take someone to administrate your system for you lot, prove the above to them and they should be able to figure it out.

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CREATE Command Denied to User

This fault occurs when the user assigned to the database does not take adequate permissions to perform the action to create columns and tables in the database. Yous will demand to log in to CPanel or Plesk to give your database user adequate permissions.

Alternatively you can create a new user to assign to your database. If you practise create a new user you will demand to ensure that it is updated in wp-config.php.

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Mistake 28

It could be because:

  • y'all are out of space on /tmp (wherever tmpdir is), or,
  • you have likewise many files in /tmp (fifty-fifty if there is lots of gratuitous infinite), or,
  • Your cache on your server is total

This is a MySQL fault and has nothing to do with WordPress directly; y'all should contact your host about it. Some users have reported that running a "repair tabular array" command in phpMyAdmin fixed the problem.

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Fault 145

This indicates that a table in your database is damaged or corrupted. If you are comfortable using phpMyAdmin y'all tin can use these instructions on repairing your MySQL database tables.

Always fill-in your database before performing any deportment on it.

If you take not used phpMyAdmin before, or are uncomfortable doing so, contact your spider web host and enquire them to run Bank check/REPAIR on your database.

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Unknown Column

An unknown column error tin exist acquired by a missing column in the database. If you have simply upgraded WordPress and then try manually upgrading again. To update your WordPress site manually, encounter the Update commodity.

If you are running a database query when you lot encounter the fault then you may by using wrong quotation marks for the identifier quote character. This question on Stack Overflow provides more details. Likewise run across the MySQL documentation.

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Resources

  • MySQL Error Codes and Messages