Topics

  • The White Screen of Decease
  • Internal Server Error
  • Error Establishing Database Connexion
    • Incorrect wp-config.php Information
    • Problems with Your Web Host
    • Compromised Website
  • Failed Auto-Upgrade
  • Connectedness Timed Out
  • Maintenance Mode Following Upgrade
  • You Make Changes and Nothing Happens
  • Pretty Permalinks 404 and Images non Working
  • Custom Post Type 404 Errors
  • Specific Mistake Messages
    • PHP Errors
      • Fatal Errors and Warnings
      • Parse errors
      • Use of an undefined constant
    • Database Errors
      • Mistake 13 – Cannot Create/Write to File
      • CREATE Control Denied to User
      • Error 28
      • Mistake 145
      • Unknown Column
    • Resources

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

This page lists the about common WordPress errors experienced past WordPress users, and provides a starting point for fixing them. At WordPress Support, you will also notice links to more than detailed pages or forums where a volunteer will be in that location to assist.

The White Screen of Death

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

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

  • A Plugin is causing compatibility issues. If you tin admission the Administration Screens try deactivating all of your Plugins and then reactivating them 1 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 will deactivate all of your Plugins. You can read more than nearly manually deactivating your plugins in the Troubleshooting FAQ.
  • Your Theme may exist causing the problem. This is especially likely if you are experiencing the white screen of death after you have just activated a new Theme, or created a New Site in a WordPress Network. Log in to the WordPress Administration Screens and actuate a default WordPress Theme (e.g. Twenty Twenty-One). If yous are using WordPress five.8 and beneath, please switch to Twenty Twenty-One theme since the Twenty Twenty-Two theme requires 5.ix and higher up. If yous can't access your Administration 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.

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Internal Server Error

Internal Server Error message

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

  • The most likely issue is a corrupted .htaccess file. Log in to your site root using FTP and rename your .htaccess file to .htaccess_old. Endeavour loading your site to see if this has solved your problem. If information technology works, make certain to visit Settings > Permalinks and reset your permalinks. This will generate a new .htaccess file for yous.
  • Try deactivating all of your Plugins to see if it is a Plugin consequence. If you are unable to admission your WordPress Administration Screens, deactivate your Plugins via FTP by following these instructions.
  • Switch the Theme to a WordPress default Theme (east.g. Twenty Twenty-One) to eliminate whatever Theme-related bug. If you are using WordPress 5.8 and below, please switch to 20 Twenty-One theme since the Xx Twenty-Two theme requires five.ix and above.
  • Increase the PHP Memory limit
  • Effort re-uploading the wp-admin and wp-includes folders from a fresh install of WordPress.

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Mistake Establishing Database Connection

If yous go a page featuring the message "Error Establishing Database Connection," this ways that there is a trouble with the connection to your database and at that place could be 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 connection" is usually caused by 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 name
  • Database username
  • Database password
  • Database host

Learn more about editing wp-config.php.

If you are sure your configuration is right you could try resetting your MySQL password manually.

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Issues with Your Spider web Host

The adjacent footstep is to contact your web host. The post-obit hosting bug may be causing the trouble:

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

Contact your hosting provider to run into if either of these problems is causing your trouble.

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Compromised Website

If yous 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 it hasn't been compromised. If it has you 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 data.
  • A alert that the update failed.
  • A PHP error message.

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

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

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Connexion Timed Out

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

  • Deactivate all Plugins. If deactivating all the WordPress Plugins on your site resolves the event, reactivate them one-by-one to run across which plugin is causing the problem. If you are unable to admission your Administration Screens, read about how to manually deactivate your plugins.
  • Switch to a default WordPress Theme. If you lot are using WordPress five.8 and beneath, delight switch to 20 Twenty-One theme since the Twenty Twenty-Two theme requires 5.9 and above. This should rule out any Theme-related problems.
  • Increment your memory limit in wp-config.php. If you are on shared hosting yous may have to ask your hosting provider to increase your retention limit for you lot.
  • Increment the maximum execution time in your php.ini file. This is not a WordPress core file so 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 time.

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Maintenance Mode Post-obit Upgrade

When WordPress updates, it automatically installs a .maintenance file. Post-obit upgrade, you may receive a message that says "Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Please check back in a infinitesimal." The maintenance file may not have been removed properly.

To remove this message practise the following:

  1. Log in to your website using your FTP program
  2. Delete the .maintenance file, which will be institute in your site root.

Read more than nigh the maintenance mode issue.

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You Make Changes and Nothing Happens

If y'all are making changes to your website and you exercise not see the changes in your browser, you may need to clear your browser cache. Your browser stores data about the websites that you visit. This makes it faster to load websites when you lot visit them because the browser just has to reload information already stored on your computer, rather than downloading it once more.

If you make a change to a website and the browser does not recollect information technology is significant, it volition but load the data from your cache, and y'all won't come across your changes. To set up the problem, simply empty your browser cache or close the tab and reopen the link.

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If yous are experiencing 404 errors with pretty permalinks and a white screen when you upload images, mod_rewrite may not 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-wing. It'south what you need to make pretty permalinks work.

WordPress Multisite networks normally feel this but it can too occur on shared hosting providers or after a site migration or server motility.

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

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

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

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Custom Mail service Type 404 Errors

Yous may feel problems with 404 errors and custom post types. Try the following steps:

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

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Specific Error Messages

There are a number of dissimilar errors that will announced in your error logs. To access your fault logs you will demand to turn on debugging and then locate your fault log via FTP. The following information will assistance you to decipher some of the common error letters.

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PHP Errors

Below are some mutual PHP mistake messages.

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Fatal Errors and Warnings

If you receive a alert that WordPress cannot alter header data and headers are already sent, information technology usually means that you lot have spaces or characters before the opening tags or after the endmost tags. Read how to fix the headers already sent error.

If you are experiencing this problem when you take but installed WordPress you may have introduced a syntax error into wp-config.php. These instructions will aid you to fix the fault.

Telephone call to undefined function

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

  • An error when trying to auto-install or car-upgrade a Plugin. Try 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.
  • Yous 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 effect.
  • 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 acquired the error to appear. If you lot are unable to exercise this from within the Administration Screens, yous may take to practice this manually via FTP.

Allowed memory size wearied

An Allowed Retentiveness Size Exhausted mistake means that your WordPress installation doesn't take enough memory to accomplish what yous want. You can attempt out the post-obit steps:

  • Increase your memory limit in wp-config.php
  • Increase your memory limit by editing php.ini. This is non a file that comes with WordPress so if you lot are unfamiliar with it y'all should contact your web host about increasing your memory limit.
Maximum execution fourth dimension exceeded

You may receive a message such as "Maximum execution fourth dimension 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 means to prepare this mistake.

Editing .htaccess

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

Add together the following line to .htaccess:

php_value max_execution_time 60

Editing php.ini

Add the following to php.ini 

max_execution_time = lx

If you are unsure of how to make these changes, or if you are on shared hosting that prevents you from making them yourself, yous should contact your hosting provider and inquire them to increase your maximum execution time.

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Parse errors

Syntax Error

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

  • Missing a ; at the terminate of an private 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 example) and approximately which line (it may not e'er be the exact line so be sure to check just earlier and just after) in the code.

Unexpected

If yous are receiving an error which says 'parse mistake: unexpected' this usually means that yous take forgotten to include a grapheme. The virtually common are:

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

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Use of an undefined constant

Every bit with parse errors, "apply of an undefined abiding" means that you are missing a character. It could exist i of the following:

  • Missing a $ when referencing a viariable
  • Missing quotation marks around 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 be experiencing this fault.

MySQL cannot create a temporary file.

The MySQL variable tmpdir is prepare 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 list and 1 of them will read: tmpdir = /somedir/ (whatsoever 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, Discover the my.ini.
  2. In one case establish, open this in a simple text editor and find the [mysqld] department.
  3. Under this section, discover the tmpdir line. If this line is commented (has a # at the start), delete the # and edit the line so that information technology reads: tmpdir = /writable/dir where /writable/dir is a directory to which you can write. Some utilise /tmp, or you might besides 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. Showtime MySQL by going to the MySQL directory and typing ./bin/safe_mysqld &. Ordinarily the MySQL directory is in /usr/local or sometimes in /usr/ on Linux systems.

The file permissions are incorrect

Right the File Permissions.

If none of this make sense and you have someone to administer your organisation for you, bear witness 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 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 adequate permissions.

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

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Error 28

It could be because:

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

This is a MySQL mistake and has nothing to practise with WordPress directly; yous should contact your host almost information technology. Some users have reported that running a "repair table" control in phpMyAdmin fixed the problem.

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Mistake 145

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

Always backup your database before performing any deportment on it.

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

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Unknown Column

An unknown column fault tin can be caused by a missing column in the database. If you have just upgraded WordPress and then try manually upgrading once more. To update your WordPress site manually, see the Update article.

If you are running a database query when you run across the fault then y'all may past using incorrect quotation marks for the identifier quote character. This question on Stack Overflow provides more than details. As well see the MySQL documentation.

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Resources

  • MySQL Mistake Codes and Messages