Topics

  • The White Screen of Death
  • Internal Server Error
  • Error Establishing Database Connection
    • Incorrect wp-config.php Information
    • Problems with Your Web Host
    • Compromised Website
  • Failed Car-Upgrade
  • Connexion Timed Out
  • Maintenance Mode Following Upgrade
  • You Make Changes and Nada Happens
  • Pretty Permalinks 404 and Images not Working
  • Custom Mail Type 404 Errors
  • Specific Error Messages
    • PHP Errors
      • Fatal Errors and Warnings
      • Parse errors
      • Use of an undefined constant
    • Database Errors
      • Fault 13 – Cannot Create/Write to File
      • CREATE Command Denied to User
      • Mistake 28
      • Error 145
      • Unknown Cavalcade
    • Resource

If you lot are encountering a WordPress fault message or white screen, don't panic. Someone has probable encountered the same message before and it can easily be solved.

This page lists the most common WordPress errors experienced by WordPress users, and provides a starting betoken for fixing them. At WordPress Support, you lot will also find links to more detailed pages or forums where a volunteer will exist at that place to assist.

The White Screen of Death

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

Before resorting to desperate measures, there are a number of reasons for the WordPress white screen of expiry:

  • A Plugin is causing compatibility issues. If you tin access the Administration Screens try deactivating all of your Plugins and then reactivating them one past ane. If you 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 tin read more nearly manually deactivating your plugins in the Troubleshooting FAQ.
  • Your Theme may be causing the problem. This is specially likely if you are experiencing the white screen of death after yous have merely 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.thou. Twenty Twenty-One). If y'all are using WordPress 5.8 and beneath, please switch to 20 Twenty-One theme since the 20 Twenty-Ii theme requires 5.9 and to a higher place. If you can't admission your Administration Screens, admission your website via FTP and navigate to the /wp-content/themes/ folder. Rename the folder for the agile Theme.

The WP_DEBUG characteristic often provides boosted information.

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Internal Server Fault

Internal Server Error bulletin

There tin be a number of reasons for an Internal Server Error. Hither are some thing you can do to solve information technology:

  • The about probable upshot 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 encounter if this has solved your problem. If it works, make sure to visit Settings > Permalinks and reset your permalinks. This volition generate a new .htaccess file for you.
  • Try deactivating all of your Plugins to see if it is a Plugin issue. If you are unable to access your WordPress Administration Screens, conciliate your Plugins via FTP past post-obit these instructions.
  • Switch the Theme to a WordPress default Theme (eastward.g. 20 Twenty-One) to eliminate any Theme-related issues. If you are using WordPress 5.8 and below, please switch to 20 Xx-1 theme since the Twenty Twenty-Two theme requires 5.9 and higher up.
  • Increase the PHP Memory limit
  • Endeavor 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 "Fault Establishing Database Connection," this means that there is a trouble 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 Information

"Mistake establishing a database connection" is ordinarily acquired past an error in your wp-config.php file. Admission your site in your FTP client. Open up wp-config.php and ensure that the following are correct:

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

Acquire more about editing wp-config.php.

If you lot are certain your configuration is right you could endeavor resetting your MySQL password manually.

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Issues with Your Web Host

The side by side step is to contact your web host. The following hosting issues may be causing the trouble:

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

Contact your hosting provider to see if either of these bug is causing your trouble.

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Compromised Website

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

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

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Failed Automobile-Upgrade

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

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

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

To update your WordPress site manually, run into the Manual Update article.

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Connection Timed Out

The connection timed out error appears when your website is trying to exercise more your server can manage. It is particularly common on shared hosting where your memory limit is restricted. Here are some things you lot can endeavor:

  • Conciliate all Plugins. If deactivating all the WordPress Plugins on your site resolves the issue, reactivate them i-past-one to come across which plugin is causing the trouble. If you are unable to access your Administration Screens, read well-nigh how to manually deactivate your plugins.
  • Switch to a default WordPress Theme. If you are using WordPress 5.8 and below, please switch to Twenty Twenty-One theme since the Twenty Xx-Two theme requires 5.nine and above. This should dominion out whatsoever Theme-related problems.
  • Increase your memory limit in wp-config.php. If yous are on shared hosting y'all may have to inquire your hosting provider to increase your memory limit for you.
  • Increase the maximum execution fourth dimension in your php.ini file. This is not a WordPress cadre file so if you are non sure how to edit it, contact your hosting provider to ask them to increase your maximum execution time. See below instructions for increasing maximum execution time.

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Maintenance Mode 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 check back in a minute." The maintenance file may not take been removed properly.

To remove this message do the post-obit:

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

Read more virtually the maintenance mode upshot.

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You Make Changes and Nothing Happens

If you are making changes to your website and you do not see the changes in your browser, you may demand to clear your browser cache. Your browser stores information well-nigh the websites that you visit. This makes information technology faster to load websites when you visit them because the browser just has to reload information already stored on your computer, rather than downloading it again.

If you lot make a change to a website and the browser does not think it is significant, it volition only load the information from your enshroud, and you won't see your changes. To gear up the problem, simply empty your browser enshroud or shut the tab and reopen the link.

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If y'all 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 spider web server software which allows for "rewriting" of URLs on-the-fly. Information technology's what you need to make pretty permalinks work.

WordPress Multisite networks usually experience this but information technology can also occur on shared hosting providers or after a site migration or server move.

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

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

If you are non familiar with editing your .htaccess file, contact your hosting provider to inquire them to turn on mod_rewrite rules. There is more than information on pretty permalinks in the WordPress Codex.

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Custom Mail service Type 404 Errors

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

  1. Brand sure that none of your Custom Mail Types and single pages have the same proper noun. If they exercise, rename the single page, including the slug.
  2. Log in to your WordPress Assistants Screens, navigate to Settings > Permalinks. Select the default permalinks. Save. And then reselect your preferred permalinks. This will flush the rewrite rules and should solve your problem.

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Specific Fault Messages

At that place are a number of dissimilar errors that will appear in your fault logs. To access your error logs yous will need to turn on debugging and so locate your error log via FTP. The following data volition assist you to decipher some of the common mistake letters.

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PHP Errors

Below are some common PHP mistake messages.

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Fatal Errors and Warnings

If you receive a warning that WordPress cannot alter header information and headers are already sent, information technology usually means that yous have spaces or characters earlier the opening tags or after the closing tags. Read how to fix the headers already sent error.

If you are experiencing this problem when you have just installed WordPress you may have introduced a syntax error into wp-config.php. These instructions will help 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 discover a file or data which isn't nowadays or attainable in the code. Reasons for this include:

  • An fault when trying to motorcar-install or machine-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 single site installation. Upgrade WordPress to resolve this issue.
  • Yous may exist trying to call a role that doesn't be. Cheque functions.php for misspellings.

Endeavor deactivating the WordPress Plugin or irresolute the WordPress Theme that acquired the error to announced. If you are unable to practise this from within the Administration Screens, you may have to do this manually via FTP.

Immune memory size exhausted

An Allowed Memory Size Exhausted fault means that your WordPress installation doesn't accept enough memory to attain what you want. You can try out the post-obit steps:

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

You lot may receive a bulletin such as "Maximum execution time of xxx seconds exceeded" or "Maximum execution time of 60 seconds exceeded". This ways that it is taking to longer for a process to complete and it is timing out. In that location are a number of means to fix this mistake.

Editing .htaccess

Make sure you back up .htaccess before you edit it.

Add the following line to .htaccess:

php_value max_execution_time threescore

Editing php.ini

Add the following to php.ini 

max_execution_time = 60

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

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Parse errors

Syntax Mistake

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

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

When this fault appears it will tell you lot which file the error appears in (functions.php for example) and approximately which line (it may non ever be the verbal line so be sure to check just before and just afterwards) in the code.

Unexpected

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

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

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Utilize of an undefined constant

Equally with parse errors, "apply of an undefined constant" ways that y'all are missing a graphic symbol. Information technology could be one 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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Error 13 – Cannot Create/Write to File

There are a number of reasons why you may exist experiencing this error.

MySQL cannot create a temporary file.

The MySQL variable tmpdir is set to a directory that cannot be written to when using PHP to access MySQL. To verify this, enter MySQL at the command line and type show variables. You'll get a long list and ane of them volition 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 unremarkably in /etc/. On Windows organization, Find the my.ini.
  2. In one case found, open this in a simple text editor and discover the [mysqld] section.
  3. Under this section, find the tmpdir line. If this line is commented (has a # at the start), delete the # and edit the line then that it reads: tmpdir = /writable/dir where /writable/dir is a directory to which yous tin write. Some use /tmp, or you might as well try /var/tmp or /usr/tmp. On Windows, utilize C:/Windows/tmp.
  4. Save the file.
  5. Shutdown MySQL by typing mysqlshutdown -u -p shutdown.
  6. Starting time MySQL past going to the MySQL directory and typing ./bin/safe_mysqld &. Unremarkably 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 organisation for you, testify the above to them and they should be able to effigy it out.

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CREATE Control Denied to User

This mistake occurs when the user assigned to the database does not have adequate permissions to perform the activity to create columns and tables in the database. You will need to log in to CPanel or Plesk to give your database user adequate permissions.

Alternatively you tin can create a new user to assign to your database. If y'all practise create a new user you lot will need to ensure that it is updated in wp-config.php.

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Error 28

It could be considering:

  • you are out of space on /tmp (wherever tmpdir is), or,
  • you accept also many files in /tmp (even if there is lots of gratuitous space), or,
  • Your cache on your server is full

This is a MySQL error and has nothing to practice with WordPress directly; yous should contact your host almost it. Some users take reported that running a "repair table" command in phpMyAdmin fixed the problem.

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Error 145

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

Always backup your database before performing whatever deportment on it.

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

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Unknown Column

An unknown column error can exist caused by a missing column in the database. If you take merely upgraded WordPress and so try manually upgrading again. To update your WordPress site manually, encounter the Update article.

If you are running a database query when yous encounter the error then yous may by using incorrect quotation marks for the identifier quote character. This question on Stack Overflow provides more details. Also see the MySQL documentation.

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Resource

  • MySQL Error Codes and Messages