WordPress down? 5 steps to solve it –

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If you have gone to university, you will be able to understand very well the feeling that you have while you are studying, of the type “I am doing the most complicated part, I can’t wait to finish my degree to relax”.

However, once the university degree is over, over time we realize that the famous phrase “enjoy while you can” It has all the sense of the worldbecause finishing your studies is only the first step, and the real career occurs as soon as you leave the university.

This is comparable to when setting up (or being set up for us) a website. Once we have our finished website made with wordpresswe may think that we are done with the most difficult part, but that is where the most complicated part begins: maintain the website and make our business work.

When the web designer or company that we have hired gives us our finished website, it is time to make a decision: pay them maintenance or do a little Juan Palomo, I cook it, I eat it. This little guide is about the second option, how to fix a broken WordPress.

Along these lines you’ll find five steps that will help us to detect errors on our website and how to solve them without the need to go to a professional, with the consequent saving money.

First of all, remember that the ideal is that you always have a backup of your website. Look or using plugins like xCloner or UpdraftPlus.

This little guide is designed to solve that moment when one morning we enter our website, so calm, with coffee in hand, and we find that it does not work, and we have no idea why. These are the most common situations that we usually find:

1. The screen goes completely blank.
2. The entire structure of the content we have on the web has been misplaced.
3. It gives us error 500 (server error).
4. It does not load us and gives us a 404 error.
5. A redirect loop is created.

Before preparing our emergency email for our hosting provider, or calling our technician, we will try to do the following:

1. Deactivate all plugins on the web.

The vast majority of the time the possible error is due to a plugin conflicting with the template you have installed, or with another plugin activated at the same time. try to disable plugins one by one, or all at onceeither from the control panel,

or renamed the folder in FTP if you do not have access to the administrator panel of your website.

By renaming the folder, all the plugins you have will be deactivated, since the web will not find said folder and will not be able to execute them.

Try now to visit your website, to see if this has solved it. If not, just re-activate or leave the plugins folder in the FTP as it was and go to the next step.

2. Switch to the default WordPress theme.

Sometimes the template you have installed is the one that causes problems. Try changing the current theme to any of the ones that come by default with WordPress, from Appearance -> Themes.

If you cannot access the control panel, you will have to change the theme by FTP. The method is similar to renaming the plugins folder, only this time rename the theme you’re using to /wp-content/themes/. (Deactivate all the themes, except one of those that come by default, so that the latter remains activated).

3. Update permalinks several times.

404 errors (when content is not found on your website) usually occur because the permalinks are outdated.

Make sure to go to Settings -> Permalinks and save the changes several times (minimum 2) to be sure that you have changed them correctly.

4. Restore .htaccess file

The .htaccess file is that file that everyone knows is there, but that few people know how to use, or when they try to, the risk of misconfiguring the web is very high.

This file, when corrupted, is another of the Main causes of 404 errors. What we recommend at this point is very simple to do, and you don’t have to take any risks, because in case something goes wrong, restore the backup of said file and that’s it.

First of all, as we have just commented, create a backup of the file. (just drag it to the desktop of your pc, from your FTP program).

TIP: The .htaccess file is located (where the wp-content, wp-admin, etc. folders are). If you don’t see the .htaccess file, make sure your FTP program is displaying the Hidden files.

Once you are sure you have a copy of the .htaccess file on your desktop, proceed to remove it from the root folder of your website.

Then enter your website and go to Settings -> Permalinks and save the configuration repeatedly. (this will regenerate a new .htaccess cleansed).

5. Fix the WordPress Site URL

Both the WordPress Address (URL) and Site Address (URL) fields must contain the same web address (your domain in this case).

Sometimes it is recommended, in case of errors on your website, to check that this field is correctly filled in, in Settings -> General.

In the event that you do not have access to the administration panel of your site, you will have to make the change by hand.

The easiest way to do this is by going to your FTP and adding a few lines of code to the wp-config.php file and the functions.php file.

a) In the file wp-config.php, right after where it says /* That’s all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */, add these lines:

define(‘WP_HOME’,’http://example.com’); define(‘WP_SITEURL’,’http://example.com’);

Remember that you will have to replace example.com with the domain of your website.

b) In the file functions.php (located in /wp-content/themes/ and inside the folder of the theme you have activated), simply add these lines to the end of said file:

update_option( ‘siteurl’, ‘http://example.com’ ); update_option( ‘home’, ‘http://example.com’ );

Going back to change again example.com for your domain. Also remember that it is important that delete these two lines once you have restored WordPress URLs from the Settings page.

With this series of steps and with a little optimism and patience, you will be able to restore your website after a fatal error or crash and at the same time know what type of error it was. (template, plugin, permalink, etc) so that in the future you will quickly know where and how to solve the situation quickly.

To avoid these problems in the future, also remember that it is highly recommended to have some other security and malware detection plugin; Do not forget to always create a backup of your website and WordPress database and store it in a safe place.

On web maintenance issues, it’s better to prevent than to cure.

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