You spent sleepless nights building your personal blog, and one day you wake up to find that all your work is gone. What if it’s a business website, and you’re losing money for every minute of downtime? What’s next? You rush to hire a developer and flood your hosting provider with messages, hoping to get your backup. This could take a lot of time, not to mention the cost. But in reality, most of the most common WordPress errors can be fixed in just a few minutes with a couple of clicks. So, what are these errors, and how can you fix them? Let’s take a look.
Before Fixing WordPress Errors
Before you to fix any error, make sure to take a complete backup of your site files and database or test with a staging / localhost setup. This will help you to restore the content if something goes wrong in your troubleshooting. Good thing is that most hosting companies like SiteGround offers staging environment for playing around with plugins / themes and testing the features before implementing on live site(s). If your hosting company does not provide this feature, you can create a local WordPress setup on your PC or Mac with MAMP, XAMPP, WAMP, Local or DevKinsta apps.
Though most of the errors can be fixed easily on live site, we still recommend to keep a back or local copy to avoid any unforeseen situation.
1. Error Establishing a Database Connection
This error is caused by the mismatch between the entered details in your configuration file (wp-config.php) with the details of your database. These details include database name, username, password, and host. You can find this error commonly after migrating to a new hosting provider or changed password of database in your hosting account.
In order to fix this, it’s necessary to go to the installation directory (also called document root) of your WordPress website. You can use File Manager app in hosting panel or use remote connection with FTP and locate the file wp-config.php. Then, verify that the details entered are the same as in your database manager. Generally, you can check the details in MySQL section of your hosting account and copy paste the details to configuration file.
Make sure that the database details in the configuration files are entered within straight single quote.
Note: If your database is located in the same hosting account as your WordPress files, then MySQL hostname should be ‘localhost’.
If the things above do not help, in some really rare cases, it might be related to the database issues on the server. It’s easy to check where the issue lies by visiting your other websites with the same hosting provider or trying to set up a fresh WordPress installation to see whether the issue replicates there.
2. Syntax Errors
These ones are tricky as they tell that something is wrong with the code. When you work on the customization of your website, it’s essential to learn CSS and know the basics of HTML to play with the look of your website. And for sure, take into account that WordPress is written in PHP, and you need to get acquainted with that too in order to build some additional functionalities.
PHP syntax errors are critical preventing the website from loading, like the below one. These errors are generally caused by the conflicting plugins and theme or outdated PHP version. You can enable debugging to find which plugin or theme is causing the issue and disable / replace it to fix the error.
CSS and HTML errors may just break the layout of your website by images not being displayed, or buttons not working and you can track these errors in the browser console. Still, we recommend that you make the changes and test everything on the sandbox or local environment. As mentioned, if the debugging is not successful you can restore the backup to have the previous state.
3. Page Not Found (404) Error
When you open your homepage, you can see the content, but all other pages will return a 404 error. This issue is likely related to the permalink configuration. To fix it, log in to your WordPress admin panel and navigate to “Settings > Permalinks” section.
Once you’re there, you can either change the current permalink structure or simply resave it. This will update your configuration settings and resolve the error.
4. Internal Server Error (500)
In the majority of cases, incorrect files and folders permissions cause internal server errors. File permissions should be 644 for files and 755 for folders for the website to be correctly accessible on the internet. Sometimes, if your hosting is on the Apache server (you can figure this out from the displayed error), the default configuration file .htaccess can trigger 500 internal server error.
To find out if that’s the case, make sure to locate it and disable the file by renaming it. If that fixes the error, then you will need to come back and figure out where the issue lies by disabling the rules one by one.
If you haven’t used any custom rules, you may just leave the old one disabled, and create a new one with the default WordPress rule that looks as follows:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>Any other rules necessary for the correct plugin functioning will be added automatically by the system.
5. White Screen of Death
It’s the most mysterious error as it does not tell you anything. You just see the white screen and nothing more. To find out the root cause, it’s necessary to check the error_log file that is located in your root installation directory. Also, you may want to enable error reporting for troubleshooting. For WordPress, it is done in the configuration file wp-config.php. Open the file, locate the string define( ‘WP_DEBUG’, false ); and change ‘false’ to ‘true’. Learn more on how to debug WordPress errors.
Once done, refresh the page to see the error message(s).
In most cases, the error may be caused by PHP limitations. In this case, you need to increase the PHP memory limit. It can be done via your PHP settings in the hosting panel.
6. Image & File Upload Error
This error occurs when you try to upload an image or file to your WordPress site, but the upload fails. You might see messages like “Sorry, this file type is not permitted for security reasons” or other related errors. The most common causes of this issue include:
- Gile being too large for the server to process.
- An unsupported file type.
- Incorrect file permissions on your uploads folder.
To fix this, you can increase the upload limit by modifying the php.ini file or by adding the following code to the wp-config.php file:
define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '256M');You should also check the file permissions in the /wp-content/uploads folder to ensure they are correct (755 for folders and 644 for files). Another possible fix is ensuring that the file type you’re uploading is supported, such as .jpg, .png, .gif, or .pdf. If you’re still facing issues, contact your hosting provider to check for any PHP configuration limits, such as upload_max_filesize and post_max_size, that may need to be adjusted.
7. CORS Errors (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing)
CORS errors typically happen when your site tries to request resources (like images, scripts, or fonts) from a different domain, but the server on that domain blocks the request for security reasons. This happens:
- When the site and the resources are hosted on different domains.
- When the CORS headers are not properly set by the server.
- Another common cause is mixed content issues, where a website uses HTTPS but is trying to load resources over HTTP.
To resolve CORS errors, you can add the correct CORS headers to your server’s configuration. For example, adding the below code to the .htaccess file allows cross-origin requests, though it’s safer to restrict it to specific domains.
Header set Access-Control-Allow-Origin "*"You should also check for mixed content errors and make sure that all resources are loaded over HTTPS. Lastly, disabling any plugins or themes that might be interfering with the CORS headers can also help.
8. Update Failed Error
The “Update Failed” error typically occurs when you try to update WordPress core, themes, or plugins, but the update fails. You might encounter this error when updating manually or during automatic updates. Common causes include insufficient server resources, conflicts with plugins or themes, or timeouts from slow server performance. To fix this, you can first deactivate all plugins and switch to a default theme to see if the issue is related to a plugin or theme conflict.
Additionally, check your file permissions to ensure that the WordPress directories and files have the correct permissions (755 for folders and 644 for files). If none of these steps work, contact your hosting provider to check for any server-side issues.
9. Publishing Failed Error
The “Publishing Failed” error happens when you try to publish or update a post but WordPress fails to do so. You may see this error despite the content looking correct. This is often due to a conflict with plugins, browser cache issues, character encoding issues, or slow server performance. Sometimes, large posts or pages may trigger this error as well.
To resolve this, start by clearing your browser cache and cookies, and try disabling any active browser extensions. If the issue continues, deactivate all plugins to check for conflicts, and switch to a default theme to rule out any theme-related issues. You should also ensure that your WordPress database is using utf8mb4 encoding and that your PHP version is compatible with the latest version of WordPress. Increasing PHP memory or execution time by adding set_time_limit(300); to your wp-config.php file can also help resolve timeout-related issues.
10. Sitemap Errors
Sitemap errors occur when WordPress fails to generate or submit a Sitemap to search engines like Google, which can hurt your site’s SEO. These errors typically arise due to misconfigurations, conflicts with SEO plugins like Yoast or Rank Math, or issues with caching plugins. A common error is the “XML Sitemap not found” message, or the Sitemap might be missing certain URLs. To fix this, check the sitemap settings in your SEO plugin and regenerate the sitemap if necessary.
Make sure the robots.txt file isn’t blocking search engines from accessing the Sitemap, and verify that the Sitemap URL is correctly submitted to Google Search Console. If caching plugins are in use, try deactivating them temporarily, as they may be serving outdated versions of the Sitemap. Also, ensure that your server is set up to serve XML files properly and that your Sitemap adheres to the XML standard.
Final Words
While there exist many more custom errors in WordPress, the ones listed above are the most widespread. Now you know how to fix them. And some final tips that can prevent the majority of the issues are related to the security of your WordPress installation. Make sure to update the CMS version, plugins and theme once they are released, use strong passwords and install a security plugin and it goes without saying that regular backups are essential regardless of your confidence in coding skills.
