Troubleshoot Your Website (Start Here)
Latest update: June 11, 2021 | Reading time: 8 to 9 minutesHave you ever come to a point where your website is not working as expected? Don’t get frustrated, it has happened to everyone.
Although some issues may be complicated, the vast majority are related to poor configuration and conflicting plugins. Thankfully, there is a simple and straightforward way for identifying the issues. Let’s see how you can troubleshoot your WordPress website.
Immediate SOS Actions:
1.
After updating to version 2.0 (or higher) of the theme,
you might have run into a PHP error that indicates a problem with LESS.
In that case, you can fix the site immediately by visiting
Dashboard > Theme Options and clicking on Save changes on any tab.
This will help the theme consolidate the latest redux framework update
and effectively restore the site to a working condition.
2.
After updating to WordPress version 5.6 or higher,
you may experience a minor functionality issue
like buttons not responding. This is the result of JQuery being
deprecated. The latest version of our theme, resolve the issues.
However, if you need to stick for a while to the currently installed versions
we recommend adding and activating the Enable JQery Migrate Helper plugin
and use its settings to switch to the Legacy version of the library. This action
will resolve the issues and restore any missing functionality.
Ok. Let’s go!
Pre-Requests
- Keep a backup of your website, to have a valid restore point in case you need to roll back. This will make the stress go away and you’ll be able to focus on finding the solution.
- Check the PHP version and memory availability. The recommended PHP version is 7.4 and, 128 Mb RAM available to PHP is the minimum required for the theme to work as expected. If you are planning to add even more plugins (especially resource-hungry ones like WooCommerce) we’d say you go for 256 Mb.
- Turn on debugging on WordPress to locate an error. Edit the wp-config.php file that’s on the root folder of your website, locate and change:
define( ‘WP_DEBUG’, false ) to
define( ‘WP_DEBUG’, true ); - Activate the log file so you can keep track of the errors. Add the following line to wp-config.php:
define( ‘WP_DEBUG_LOG’, true );
You can find the debug.log file, after it’s been created, in /wp-content/ - Activate the Developer mode on Theme Options.
Into-Depth-Checking
- Review any plugins installed.
- Do you have any deactivated plugins you are not planning to use? Remove them and check your website to see if the issue has been resolved.
- Have you installed two plugins for the same job? Consider removing one of them. When picking a plugin, always choose the one recommended/requested by the theme author.
- Do you have a caching plugin activated? Consider deactivating the plugin until the issue is resolved.
- Do you have a javascript minifying or any other optimization plugin activated? Consider removing it until the problem is fixed.
- Even if you have installed and activated only the absolutely necessary plugins, try deactivating -one by one- each third-party plugin (apart from those recommended/requested by the theme) and, check your website. Every time you deactivate a plugin, check your website. If you locate the plugin that is creating the conflict, consider removing it or replacing it with another.
- Review any added CSS rules / Javascript snippets.
- Do you have custom CSS rules added? Consider removing them (but keep a backup so you can apply them again when the site is back on track).
- Have you added any Javascript code? Consider removing it (but keep a backup, for reasons mentioned before).
- Always keep them updated
- It is very important to use the latest versions available. This applies to WordPress, the theme, and the plugins as well. Programmers get feedback every day or they discover things themselves. They do their best to fix bugs and implement new features. That’s why keeping your installation updated will not only fix a problem but also may prevent it from appearing in the first place.
- Check folder theme names
- This one is a common error. The theme makes use of the slugs so we recommend keeping the default folder names for the theme and the child theme or else you may run into unexpected behavior
Depending on the issue, you may need to review more of the server configuration.
Common situations, like files not uploading, settings not getting saved, unexpected behavior and others are sometimes related to server settings.
- File permissions. This one is very important for WordPress. Wrong permissions may result in an inability for uploading files, updating plugins and, saving settings. Please, take a few minutes to review the official WordPress Codex article on the matter. WPBeginner has an interesting article on this too.
- Theme Installation Folder: make sure you install the theme in wp-content/themes/ using the original theme folder title. If you have changed the folder name (or moved it to a subfolder) we recommend moving it under wp-content/themes/ with the original theme folder title.
- PHP Settings. The configuration of PHP is of high importance for eliminating common issues. You need to check
- Upload Max Size and Upload Max Filesize. These values are updated on the php.ini file. Make sure you have set this value to 32mb or more, which is a reasonable size for uploading a large file (like the theme file) on the installation. If the value is too small you may run into a message like this: “the link you follow has expired”
- PHP version. As mentioned before, the version of the HTML pre-processor is of great importance for the performance of your website. WordPress will work with a version as early as 5.6. This backward compatibility has been maintained for the (actually popular) scenario of keeping a website in a shared hosting with another website that doesn’t support a more recent version of PHP. If the hosting configuration allows for updating to the latest version there is no reason not to.
Annex: SSL Issues
When moving from plain to secured HTTP protocol, a few issues may occur.
- Check Dashboard > Settings > General and, make sure WordPress Address (URL)
and Site Address (URL) are updated to the new URL address. The URL addresses of the secured protocol have an “s” after “http”. Example: https://mywebsite.com/ . This is essential for the theme to work as a change of the URL address may cause some parts to stop loading (like stylesheets). Therefore, before deploying, we recommend switching to HTTPS as soon as possible, most of the browsers nowadays mark as unsecured any webpage without SSL encryption. Also, after switching, you may need to upload some images again as the web pages may be identified by the browsers as “mixed content”.
Following the above procedures will help you identify the issues and probably solve them. If a problem persists, contact us through our support desk and, we’ll investigate as soon as possible.
Useful Tools
WordPress Query Monitor: Check the performance of your website and identify the latency https://wordpress.org/plugins/query-monitor/
WP Reset: Remove all posts, pages, menus, etc. and start again without having to install WordPress again. https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-database-reset/
File Manager: A handy plugin for instant access to your installation’s files. https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-file-manager/
FileZilla: an open source FTP client for reliable transactions between your computer and the server https://filezilla-project.org/Useful ToolsUseful Tools
AMP Stack: built a local server on your computer to test WordPress installations, themes, plugins, etc. Get more information here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMP