WordPress is known as one of the best platforms to build your website on, but even the best option can contain some flaws. No biggie though, these flaws can all be fixed with some help. WordPress issues can leave you scratching your head but fixing these problems is totally worth it for the long haul. You need to prioritize smoothening the WordPress bumps and not compromise on the quality of your website.
Everyone has to start somewhere on this journey because these problems might seem very technical but they are in fact very common and thus have verified solutions available. Whether you are a pro or a beginner, you can easily face issues related to WordPress. Many issues can seem really intimidating at first but they usually stem from something really small and minor. For example, Deleting categories in WordPress might seem quite difficult to overcome but we already have already dedicated a guide to help you with this issue. So as long you are aware of the problem and its source, you are usually good to go. You can even troubleshoot things on your own and fix the problem with a little bit of time and minimal effort.
You can face errors like maximum upload image size error, file permission image upload error, HTTP error while uploading an image, and many other WordPress issues. If you are struggling with an unexpected error, then you don’t need to worry because we have already covered them!
Do you need to fix a WordPress issue on your Website by yourself? This article will help you fix those darn WordPress issues by discussing the details surrounding these issues and the steps you can take to troubleshoot and implement the solutions.
How Do I Fix Image Upload Errors in WordPress?
There is nothing more frustrating than when you work on your WordPress website and get an error while uploading your images. Let’s take a look at a few image upload issues and try to solve them:
Maximum Upload Image Size Error
Sometimes, when you go to the Media option through your WordPress dashboard and you try to upload an image, you may get an error saying that the “Image exceeds the minimum upload size for this site”.
To fix this error:
- Log in to your hosting provider’s Control Panel
- Locate “Select PHP Version” under the software section and click on it
- Select the PHP option on the top right-hand side
- Look for the memory_limit option
- Change the default value to a new value that should be greater than the existing default value
- Change the post_max_size from 2MB to 32MB
- Next, change the upload_max_filesize from 2MB to 32MB
- Click on save
- Go back to your WordPress dashboard and upload an image to verify that the error is gone
File Permission Image Upload Error
Quite often, you may have a problem with your media files not showing up inside your WordPress media folder. Furthermore, you may encounter the following two errors as well:
- The uploaded file can not be moved to wp-content/uploads/
- Unable to create directory wp-content/uploads/2019/04. Is its parent directory writable by the server?
Issues like these can happen if your website hosting provider upgrades their server or because of any other server misconfiguration. To solve these errors:
- Log in to your website hosting provider’s Control Panel
- Go to File Manager
- Go to public.html → wp-content → uploads
- Right-click on uploads and change the Permission value to 755
- Check the Recursive option
- Save settings and upload your images
HTTP Error While Uploading An Image
If you get an HTTP error while uploading an image on your WordPress website, the first thing you can do is to check if your login session has expired. An expired page will require you to refresh the login page and log in to your WordPress dashboard and try to upload the image again. If this method does not solve your issue, do the following steps:
- Rename the image (erase special characters and language accents).
- Optimize and compress your image to decrease its size by using an online compressing tool such as Tiny PNG.
- Resize your image with your preferred photo-editing platform
If the error persists, troubleshoot for a plugin or a theme conflict. To do this:
- Backup your WordPress website
- Navigate to the Plugins list in your WordPress dashboard
- Test if you can upload your image after disabling one plugin at a time
- If the HTTP error persists, go to your WordPress theme and replace it with an alternative
How Do I Fix Mixed Content Issues WordPress
When you install an SSL certificate on your WordPress website, you expect a padlock symbol to show up beside your website address in the URL bar. Instead, you may see an exclamation mark with a mixed content error message.
This means that the content has not loaded securely over the SSL certificate that you installed. The WordPress mixed content error happens when you install an SSL certificate on your website and the SSL certificate still loads one or more assets using an insecure protocol such as HTTP 1 or HTTP 1.1.
How To Identify Mixed Content Warnings on a WordPress Website?
If you are using the Chrome browser, you can quickly find the element that is causing the mixed content warning to show up. You can do this with Chrome’s inspection tool.
- Open the webpage that shows the mixed content warning
- Right-click anywhere and choose Inspect
- Click on the Console tab and view all mixed content alerts in red and yellow color
These alerts will display the source URL that is being called over HTTP instead of HTTPS. Under the Security tab in Chrome’s inspection tool, you can select “View the request and Network panel”. There, you will find a list of links that are initiating the mixed content warning.
To solve the mixed content error in WordPress you can choose between any of the following solutions:
Use Hosting Settings
Most WordPress website hosting providers have a “Search and Replace” tool in their hosting dashboard that you can use to troubleshoot mixed content errors. To do this:
- Log in to your website hosting dashboard
- Go to the Search and Replace option
- Choose “Secure all URLs” from the “Choose URLs to secure with HTTPS” field
Try A WordPress Plugin
You can also fix mixed content issues with a WordPress plugin. For example, the Really Simple SSL plugins automatically adjust all the links on your website to go over to HTTPS.
- Back up your WordPress website
- Navigate to WordPress dashboard → Plugins
- Search for the “Really Simple SSL” plugin
- Install and activate the plugin
- Go to the Plugin settings and click on “Go ahead and activate SSL”
Use WP-CLI Commands
You can also fix your WordPress mixed content warnings with the help of WP-CLI commands. To use WP-CLI commands:
- Log in to your WordPress website server via SSH
- Go to your WordPress root folder and run this command “wp search-replace ‘http://mywebsite.com’ ‘http://mywebsite.com’ –all-tables –skip-columns=guid”
- The above command will replace all HTTP strings with HTTPS
- Reload your website and check if the mixed content issue is solved
How to Fix Broken Permalinks in WordPress
A permalink is the URL of your WordPress website page or post. For example, if your website is https://mywpwebsite.com, your permalink is https://mywpwebsite.com/mywebpage.com.
There can be several reasons behind your permalinks not working properly. Let’s take a look at a few of these root causes and fix your WordPress permalink complication.
Check Permalink Settings
One of the reasons that you might be facing a permalink issue is that your permalink settings are not configured correctly.
Generally, it is a part of the best SEO practices to change your WordPress website structure to accommodate post names. Permalink structures use dates. If your content is evergreen and covers a specific topic not reliant on a certain time period, you don’t need to change your permalink structure since the information is always relevant to the newer users.
However, if you are posting ever-evolving content, the date in your post makes sense to the viewers, especially if the date is recent. Therefore, it is always a good idea to go by post name.
To change your website’s permalink structure for your posts and your login page:
- Log in to your WordPress website dashboard
- Click on Settings from the left navigation bar and click on Permalinks
- Select the Post name option and save the changes
- Clear your website cache and reload the page
Fix WordPress Issue With .htaccess File
Another reason that your permalinks may be broken or returning a 404 error code is that your .htaccess is misconfigured. To fix it:
- Log in to your Website hosting provider dashboard
- Navigate to the Control Panel
- Go to your root folder (public.html)
- Locate and open the .htaccess file
- Check if the following code is present. If not, copy and paste it on your .htaccess file
# BEGIN WordPress
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ – [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
# END WordPress
- Refresh your web pages and see if this fixes the permalink issue
Check For Plugin Compatibility
WordPress offers a lot of plugins to improve the user functionality of your website. However, these plugins can cause direct conflicts with your permalink structure and can cause the structure to break down as well. To diagnose which plugin is causing the problem:
- Log in to your Website WordPress dashboard
- Navigate to Plugins
- Deactivate all your plugins and clear the website cache
- Check if your permalinks are working fine
- Next, activate one plugin at a time.
- If you see that your permalink breaks after activating a plugin, delete and replace it with an alternative
Change the Default Login Page
The default login page for every WordPress website ends with either a login or a wp-login. Although this simple slug makes it easy for you to access your website for changes and updates, it also lets hackers access your login URL and use their nefarious methods to randomly attack and hack your website.
Therefore it is a good idea to change the login page permalink of your WordPress website. To accomplish this, one simple method is to install a WordPress plugin to do the job for you.
- Go to your WordPress Plugin section
- Click in Add new and search for WPS Hide login
- Install and activate the plugin
- Go to the WPS Hide login settings
- Add a new admin permalink path
- Type in the existing admin URL and save changes
- Use the new login URL to access your WordPress admin dashboard
How To Temporarily Take WordPress Site Offline To Fix It
Sometimes you need to temporarily take down your WordPress website to fix the bugs and errors in it or for the simple purpose of changing your theme. However, if you take it down the incorrect way, your website visitors may encounter an error message and that would in turn affect your overall user experience.
Instead, you should use the maintenance mode option and add a custom page to greet your visitors and let them know that your WordPress is still active, and that it will be back shortly.
How to Take WordPress Website Offline
The best part about WordPress plugins is that you don’t have to touch or tamper with any code. Programmers often write code to enable the maintenance mode on their WordPress website and can also make a custom “Coming Soon” page using their code as well. However, this obviously requires skill in code writing, and that only comes with knowledge and experience.
Alternatively, for the easy way out, you can install and activate a WordPress plugin to put your website in maintenance mode with a few simple steps. After you fix the errors on your WordPress website, you can turn off maintenance mode with the same ease you turned it on with.
In this particular example, we will go forward with the SeedProd WordPress plugin. The maintenance mode available in SeedProd uses a 503 temporary redirect to tell search engines that your website is under maintenance so that it does not affect your SEO or your website’s reputation. Let us show you how to do it:
- Log in to your WordPress admin dashboard and go to Plugins
- Click on Add New and search for SeedProd
- Install the plugin and activate it
- Click on the SeedProd Pages option and enable the maintenance mode or the ‘Coming Soon’ mode
Make A Customized Maintenance Mode or Coming Soon Page
You can choose to use the maintenance mode in SeedProd if your website is up and running but you still need to fix the errors present in it. On the other hand, the ‘Coming Soon’ mode is geared towards enticing the viewers about something interesting coming up on your new website.
Therefore, it is a great idea to make an attractive custom page for both the maintenance mode and the Coming Soon mode.
After you activate the maintenance or Coming Soon mode in SeedProd:
- Click on the Edit page
- Choose a template for your maintenance or Coming Soon message page
- Use the text, image, and tools to make a custom welcome page and hit save
- Now, your viewers will be redirected to your beautiful custom page via a 503 temporary redirect through SeedProd
How to Use Local Host To Fix Your WordPress Website
After you are done taking down your WordPress website and making a Coming Soon page to sit in its place, you need to work on the existing errors to fix the issue or change its design. To do that, you can install WordPress locally on your computer to test things out until all the errors are fixed.
- Download WordPress Software from Bitnami for the Apple, Linux, or Windows version
- Install the downloaded .exe file
- Select your language as English and click next
- Check the boxes for WordPress and PhpMyAdmin and hit next
- Choose the drive you wish to install the WordPress software on and click next
- Choose your login credentials and blog name
- Leave the mail support dialog box empty and hit next again
- Let the installer complete the WordPress installation
- Open your browser and type in “localhost/WordPress/login”
- Enter the login credentials to access your local WordPress dashboard
- Go to your live WordPress website and install the “All-in-one WP Migration” plugin
- Click on Export and then select File
- Download the files in .zip format
- Open your local WordPress
- Install the “All-in-one WP Migration” plugin and go to Import → File
- Select the downloaded zip file from the live WordPress website
- Let the import process complete and then hit Finish
- Now you are ready to fix your WordPress website errors locally on your computer
How to Move WordPress From HTTP to HTTPS
When you visit your WordPress website, you may see a “Not Secure” message on the top left side of your browser beside the URL address bar. This message indicates that your website is running on HTTP instead of HTTPS.
HTTPS secures the connection between your website and your user. As a result, it is hard for hackers to listen in and steal information. Whenever you want to buy something online, you need a secure connection for data transfers. This is where SSL and HTTPS come in.
Even if you own a simple blog rather than an eCommerce website, you need to install an SSL certificate. Why is that? Well, Google announced that HTTPS-enabled websites will have an advantage over HTTP sites in terms of SEO.
Secondly, most online payment companies like Paypal Pro and Stripe require you to have a secured connection (HTTPS) and SSL installed on your WordPress website. To do this, you can either contact your website hosting provider’s customer support to install the SSL certificate or you can enable HTTPS and activate the SSL certificate yourself.
How to Fix The WordPress Contact Form Not Sending Email Issue
Have you migrated from the default PHP mail function to SMTP for email delivery? Are you also still facing problems like your contact form not sending emails with SMTP? The problem could be rooted in the wrong SMTP settings.
Follow these steps to fix the email delivery issues present within the use of your contact form with the help of a WordPress plugin.
- Login to your WordPress website dashboard
- Navigate to Plugins and click on Add New
- Search for the WP Mail SMTP Plugin
- Install and activate the plugin
- Go to WP Mail SMTP settings
- Enter a valid email address to send emails from under the “From Email” section (Use the same email provider you usually do, Yahoo or Gmail being common options)
- Check the “Force from Email” option box
- Next, choose an appropriate “From Name” to act as your name and select the “Force from Name” option
- Check the “Return-path” checkbox
- In the Mailer field, select “Other SMTP”
- Under “Other SMTP” settings, type in your username and password to connect your website to your email provider
- For Gmail, enter smtp.gmail.com on Host field, 465 on Port field, and choose SSL encryption
- You can use the same process for Yahoo by entering smtp.mail.yahoo.com on Host field, 465 on Port field, and choose SSL encryption
- For Hotmail, enter smtp.live.com on Host field, 587 on Port field, and choose TLS encryption
- Next, open your [less secure] app for access to your Gmail, Yahoo, or Hotmail
- Send a test email through your contact form
How to Fix WordPress Plugin Conflicts
WordPress plugins are powerful add-ons for any sort of website. However, an excess of everything can sometimes be bad for your desired end result.
For instance, you may think that installing two SEO or cache plugins at the same time results in more horsepower and SEO optimization. The reality is actually quite different. The less you have for one function, the better your website performs when it comes to WordPress plugins.
When you install two SEO plugins, the code from one plugin can hurt the SEO efforts of the other one due to the following reasons:
- The two SEO plugins can cause recourse conflict with each other due to their coding complexities, such as those in billing and eCommerce inventory.
- One poorly written code from one SEO plugin can bring down the whole website, making it impossible for the other SEO plugin to work in your favor.
- Your WordPress website can be indexed incorrectly on the search pages.
- You will have separate XML Sitemaps as SEO plugins generate one on their own
- If you update one SEO plugin, the updated version may cause a serious conflict with the second SEO plugin
Therefore, it is the best SEO practice to use one WordPress SEO plugin at a time.
The same thing happens when you install and activate two cache plugins on your WordPress website.
- Your website speed suffers as multiple cache plugins compete with each other by causing unnecessary queries in the backend
- Minifying CSS on multiple cache plugins can cause severe damage to the .htaccess file
- Enabling caching on multiple plugins reduces the web page load speed instead of increasing it
- Activating two cache plugins can break your website by causing a conflict with your WordPress theme
- Multiple caching plugins can also cause a conflict with most SEO plugins
How to Troubleshoot SEO and Cache Plugin Conflicts
Sometimes SEO and cache plugin conflicts can cause the white screen of death to appear, which is when your WordPress website crashes and you get locked out of your admin panel as well. To diagnose these issues at the very beginning of the issue, follow these steps.
- Log in to your WordPress dashboard
- Go to Plugins → Installed plugins
- Keep one SEO and Cache plugin and uninstall the others
- Clear your cache
- If any error persists, deactivate all plugins
- Activate them one by one and see which plugin is breaking your website
- Deactivate the plugin that is causing the conflict and install the alternative
