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 Auto-Upgrade
  • Connection Timed Out
  • Maintenance Way Following Upgrade
  • Y'all Make Changes and Nothing Happens
  • Pretty Permalinks 404 and Images non Working
  • Custom Mail service Blazon 404 Errors
  • Specific Error Letters
    • PHP Errors
      • Fatal Errors and Warnings
      • Parse errors
      • Use of an undefined constant
    • Database Errors
      • Error 13 – Cannot Create/Write to File
      • CREATE Command Denied to User
      • Error 28
      • Error 145
      • Unknown Column
    • Resources

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

This page lists the nigh common WordPress errors experienced past WordPress users, and provides a starting indicate for fixing them. At WordPress Support, you lot will too detect links to more detailed pages or forums where a volunteer volition exist in that location to aid.

The White Screen of Death

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

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

  • A Plugin is causing compatibility issues. If yous tin admission the Administration Screens try deactivating all of your Plugins and and so reactivating them ane by one. 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 volition deactivate all of your Plugins. You can read more about manually deactivating your plugins in the Troubleshooting FAQ.
  • Your Theme may exist causing the problem. This is peculiarly probable if you lot are experiencing the white screen of decease later on you 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. 20 Twenty-I). If you are using WordPress 5.eight and below, please switch to Xx Twenty-I theme since the Twenty Twenty-Two theme requires five.ix and above. If yous can't access your Assistants Screens, access your website via FTP and navigate to the /wp-content/themes/ folder. Rename the folder for the active Theme.

The WP_DEBUG feature often provides additional information.

Superlative ↑

Internal Server Error

Internal Server Error message

There tin be a number of reasons for an Internal Server Fault. Here are some matter you can practise to solve information technology:

  • The virtually likely event 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 information technology works, brand sure to visit Settings > Permalinks and reset your permalinks. This will generate a new .htaccess file for you.
  • Try deactivating all of your Plugins to see if it is a Plugin result. If you are unable to access your WordPress Administration Screens, deactivate your Plugins via FTP by following these instructions.
  • Switch the Theme to a WordPress default Theme (due east.grand. Xx Twenty-I) to eliminate any Theme-related problems. If yous are using WordPress 5.8 and below, delight switch to Twenty Twenty-One theme since the Twenty Twenty-Two theme requires 5.nine and in a higher place.
  • Increase the PHP Retentivity limit
  • Try re-uploading the wp-admin and wp-includes folders from a fresh install of WordPress.

Summit ↑

Error Establishing Database Connection

If you get a page featuring the message "Error Establishing Database Connection," this means that at that place is a problem with the connection to your database and in that location could be a number of reasons for this. The post-obit are possible reasons and solutions.

Summit ↑

Incorrect wp-config.php Information

"Error establishing a database connexion" is usually caused by an fault in your wp-config.php file. Admission your site in your FTP customer. Open up wp-config.php and ensure that the following are right:

  • Database proper name
  • Database username
  • Database countersign
  • Database host

Learn more about editing wp-config.php.

If you are sure your configuration is correct y'all could try resetting your MySQL password manually.

Top ↑

Issues with Your Web Host

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

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

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

Tiptop ↑

Compromised Website

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

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

Acme ↑

Failed Auto-Upgrade

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

  • A bare white screen and no data.
  • A alarm that the update failed.
  • A PHP error message.

The WordPress automated upgrade feature may fail due to a glitch in the connection with the principal WordPress files, a trouble with your Cyberspace connection during upgrade, or incorrect File Permissions

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

Top ↑

Connection Timed Out

The connection timed out error appears when your website is trying to exercise more than your server can manage. Information technology is particularly common on shared hosting where your retention limit is restricted. Here are some things you can try:

  • Deactivate all Plugins. If deactivating all the WordPress Plugins on your site resolves the event, reactivate them one-by-one to see which plugin is causing the trouble. If yous are unable to access your Administration Screens, read virtually how to manually deactivate 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 20-Two theme requires 5.ix and to a higher place. This should rule out whatever Theme-related problems.
  • Increment your memory limit in wp-config.php. If you are on shared hosting you lot may accept to ask your hosting provider to increase your retentiveness limit for you.
  • Increase the maximum execution time in your php.ini file. This is not a WordPress cadre file and then if you are not 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 fourth dimension.

Top ↑

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. Please bank check back in a minute." The maintenance file may non have been removed properly.

To remove this bulletin do the post-obit:

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

Read more well-nigh the maintenance mode issue.

Height ↑

Yous Make Changes and Nothing Happens

If you are making changes to your website and you practice not see the changes in your browser, you may need to articulate your browser cache. Your browser stores information near the websites that you visit. This makes it faster to load websites when y'all visit them considering the browser just has to reload information already stored on your computer, rather than downloading it once again.

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

Top ↑

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 spider web server software which allows for "rewriting" of URLs on-the-wing. It'south what yous need to make pretty permalinks work.

WordPress Multisite networks usually experience this but it can besides occur on shared hosting providers or afterwards a site migration or server move.

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

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

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

Top ↑

Custom Post Type 404 Errors

You may experience bug with 404 errors and custom mail service types. Effort the following steps:

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

Tiptop ↑

Specific Mistake Messages

At that place are a number of different errors that will appear in your error logs. To access your mistake logs you will need to plough on debugging and then locate your mistake log via FTP. The following information will help yous to decipher some of the mutual error letters.

Pinnacle ↑

PHP Errors

Below are some mutual PHP error letters.

Peak ↑

Fatal Errors and Warnings

If you receive a alarm that WordPress cannot modify header information and headers are already sent, it commonly means that you have spaces or characters earlier the opening tags or afterward the closing tags. Read how to fix the headers already sent error.

If you are experiencing this problem when yous have just installed WordPress you may have introduced a syntax error into wp-config.php. These instructions will help you to fix the mistake.

Phone call to undefined role

An error reading phone call to undefined function could mean that a WordPress Plugin is trying to observe a file or data which isn't present or accessible in the lawmaking. Reasons for this include:

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

Try deactivating the WordPress Plugin or changing the WordPress Theme that caused the error to appear. If you are unable to do this from within the Administration Screens, you may take to do this manually via FTP.

Allowed memory size exhausted

An Allowed Retentivity Size Exhausted error means that your WordPress installation doesn't accept enough memory to attain what you desire. Yous can try out the following steps:

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

You may receive a message such as "Maximum execution fourth dimension of thirty seconds exceeded" or "Maximum execution time of sixty seconds exceeded". This ways that it is taking to longer for a procedure to complete and it is timing out. There are a number of ways to set up this error.

Editing .htaccess

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

Add the following line to .htaccess:

php_value max_execution_time sixty

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, you should contact your hosting provider and ask them to increase your maximum execution time.

Summit ↑

Parse errors

Syntax Error

A syntax error means that you have made a mistake while creating your PHP structure. Yous could, for example, be;

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

When this fault appears it will tell you which file the error appears in (functions.php for example) and approximately which line (information technology may not always exist the verbal line and then exist sure to bank check just before and simply later on) in the code.

Unexpected

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

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

Superlative ↑

Utilise of an undefined constant

Equally with parse errors, "use of an undefined constant" means that you are missing a character. It could exist one of the following:

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

Top ↑

Database Errors

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

Peak ↑

Error xiii – Cannot Create/Write to File

There are a number of reasons why yous may be experiencing this error.

MySQL cannot create a temporary file.

The MySQL variable tmpdir is set 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 type show variables. You lot'll get a long listing 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, Find the my.ini.
  2. One time establish, open this in a simple text editor and find the [mysqld] section.
  3. Under this section, discover the tmpdir line. If this line is commented (has a # at the starting time), delete the # and edit the line and then that it reads: tmpdir = /writable/dir where /writable/dir is a directory to which you tin can write. Some utilise /tmp, or you might also try /var/tmp or /usr/tmp. On Windows, use C:/Windows/tmp.
  4. Salvage the file.
  5. Shutdown MySQL by typing mysqlshutdown -u -p shutdown.
  6. Kickoff 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 wrong

Correct the File Permissions.

If none of this make sense and you lot have someone to administrate your system for you, evidence the to a higher place to them and they should be able to figure information technology out.

Peak ↑

CREATE Command Denied to User

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

Alternatively you tin create a new user to assign to your database. If you do create a new user you will need to ensure that it is updated in wp-config.php.

Top ↑

Error 28

It could be considering:

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

This is a MySQL error and has nothing to do with WordPress directly; you should contact your host about it. Some users take reported that running a "repair table" command in phpMyAdmin stock-still the problem.

Peak ↑

Error 145

This indicates that a tabular array in your database is damaged or corrupted. If yous are comfy using phpMyAdmin you can utilize these instructions on repairing your MySQL database tables.

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

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

Top ↑

Unknown Column

An unknown column error can exist acquired by a missing cavalcade in the database. If y'all accept just upgraded WordPress then try manually upgrading again. To update your WordPress site manually, see the Update commodity.

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

Top ↑

Resource

  • MySQL Error Codes and Messages