9 Most Common WordPress Issues and How to Resolve Them

Published on: 30/07/2022 | Updated on: December 22, 2023

What are the most common WordPress issues and how to solve them? WordPress is an incredible tool that helps you build and maintain websites. It has allowed nearly half a billion people to create a website with minimum technical knowledge.

Besides being a practical solution, it comes with downfalls that can cause serious issues for its users. In this article, we decided to cover the most common ones and show you the solutions for each.

Note: Before we cover the most common issues in WordPress and give you actionable tips on solving them, make sure to backup your website. And do it regularly.

This way, if you cannot solve these or any other issues that might appear in WordPress, at least you’ll be able to use the previous, functioning version of your website.

Now, let’s go over the issues.

9 Most Common WordPress Issues

Internal Server Error

This is one of the most common issues you’ll encounter in WordPress.

It appears when some part of your website is not functioning well, but the server cannot identify it. This is bad news for you – you won’t know where the problem is, so you’ll have to troubleshoot. But do not worry too much and blame the developers of the website, the problem may emerge after the website began to function. In any case, the cost of developing a website WordPress this will not change.

One of the most common causes is when your .htaccess file is corrupted. First, access your site by FTP (File Transfer Protocol, a tool that gives you a direct access to the files that create your WordPress website) and find the .htaccess file in one of the directories. Then, rename it and save it with a new name.

If this simple trick has worked, you won’t see the error again.

After you’ve taken care of this part, go to the settings on your dashboard, find the Permalinks section and click save. That’s how you’ll create a new .htaccess file that won’t cause the error.

WordPress Not Sending Email Issue

If you have a website, chances are that you want to communicate with your audience. With WordPress development, this can be an issue if you haven’t configured your hosting server correctly.

Check if the PHP mail() function is configured correctly – this should make it possible to send emails from your WordPress site again.

Sometimes, even with a proper configuration, your emails tend to end up in spam. To fix this issue, set up an SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) that will help you increase the deliverability of your emails.

White Screen of Death

This issue is a tricky one because you won’t receive the message with a reason why your website broke. Instead, you’ll only see a white screen.

Source: Wpbeginner

Since the reason isn’t clear enough, you must try several approaches to solve it. Test them one by one and see where the problem was.

Plugins are one of the causes of this problem, so start by disabling all plugins. Then, activate one after another until you find the plugin that caused the issue.

Lack of memory could be one of the causes of the white screen as well. Fixing it is easy, though. The problem should be solved by increasing the amount of memory available for your WordPress site.

The third common cause is a theme you’re using. To test if this is the cause, switch to one of the default themes offered by WordPress. Then, carefully pick another custom theme to avoid this issue from appearing again.

Memory Exhausted Error

If your WordPress website breaks down with a message like the one below:

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of _____ bytes exhausted (tried to allocate _____ bytes) in /home/username/public_html/site1/wp-includes/plugin.php on line _____

It means that a script or WordPress plugins you’re using has exceeded your memory size limit.

Fixing this issue is simple. First, increase the PHP memory limit through WordPress settings. Then, edit the wp-config.php in your website’s root folder, search for: ‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, and increase the number given there.

Once you save the changes you made, the error won’t appear for your visitors anymore.

Connection Timed out Error

If you have a shared hosting of your website, there’s a high chance you’ll encounter the “ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT” error in WordPress. This way, you’ll quickly overburden your website with tasks. Plugins, themes, and PHP issues often cause this.

Source: Kinsta

This is another issue that you have to solve by troubleshooting. Deactivate your plugins one by one and enter the website after each deactivation. That’s how you’ll detect the issue.

Check memory limitations like in the step we described above, and disable a custom theme if you have one in place.

If the issue isn’t fixed, contacting your hosting provider for help is the only option left.

Error Establishing a Database Connection

This is the message you’ll get when your website can’t connect to the database. The cause is usually an incorrect entry containing your database details.

Check if your database username, password, and host are correctly entered. Then, check if you’re receiving the same error on both the front and back end. If it differs, you’ll have to repair your database.

This is how you’ll do that:

1. Enter wp-config.php file
2. Find the section that says ‘That’s all, stop editing!’
3. Just above it, enter define(‘WP_ALLOW_REPAIR’,true);
4. Save the changes
5. Upload the file to your server again
6. Open the page http://www.websitename.com/wp-admin/maint/repair.php
7. Click “Repair Database”
8. When the repair is complete, go back to the wp-config.php file and remove the line you entered in step 3.

WordPress Parse or Syntax Error

​​This error usually appears when you’re not adding snippets of code correctly into your WordPress files.

To avoid this issue, you should upgrade your knowledge to be able to paste snippets without making mistakes. However, mistakes happen even if you’re an experienced programmer. You’ll have to access your files through FTP to fix a syntax error.

The error code will indicate the location of an error, so you’ll easily find the faulty code. When you detect it, remove it and save the file you’re editing.

You have to re-upload it to the server for changes to take place. If you’ve done everything well, the message won’t appear, and your website will function properly.

WordPress is not Uploading Images

From time to time, you’ll have problems with uploading images to your WordPress website and get a message like this:

‘Unable to create directory wp-content/uploads/2022/07. Is its parent directory writable by the server?’

The reason behind it is a simple one – incorrect file permissions.

To fix this, first, find the uploads folder. Then:

1. Go to file permissions
2. Set the “Numeric value” to “744” for all uploads to the directory and all its subdirectories
3. You’ll see a ‘Recurse into subdirectories’ text in the table as well. Mark it.
4. Tick in the ‘Apply to directories only’ option.
5. Save.

You’ll have to configure file permissions as well. Here, from File permissions:

1. Set the “Numeric value” to 644.
2. Mark the ‘Recurse into subdirectories’ text.
3. Tick the ‘Apply to files only’ option.
4. Save.
5. WordPress Login Redirect Loop

WordPress login redirect loop is an issue where the login page keeps on redirecting and refreshing when you try to log in. The cause is cookies collected and used for authentication of your login data.

This means that the solution is simple – delete your cookies. You’ll do this by going to your browser settings and clearing browsing data. Then, exit your browser and enter it again to be sure that changes have taken place, and you’ll enter your WordPress website without issues. 

403 Forbidden Error in WordPress

This code means your server doesn’t allow you to access a page.

Why is this happening?

Most probably, because there is something wrong with file permissions or plugins.

Your server thinks you do not have the necessary permissions to access a page.

Go to your WordPress settings to fix this. Here you should upgrade the permissions so you can access all parts of your website.

When it comes to plugins, troubleshooting is the way to go. There is no simple way to figure out which one is causing you issues. Reactivate them all and activate them one by one until you find the plugin causing the 403 message to appear.

Conclusion

Above, we’ve covered the most common WordPress issues that occur with WordPress users. Fortunately, they are solvable in a couple of steps and with a little bit of WordPress knowledge.

This will keep your website functioning and protect you from bigger issues and related scenarios that might happen to you while using WordPress and keep your website up and running.

About the author

Dmitriy Maschenko is the head of a division and a Board member at PSD2HTML, a company that offers top-notch web and mobile development services to all kinds of clients, from S&M businesses to agencies and governmental bodies. Dmitriy went all the way from a developer trainee position up to where he is now. With 12+ years of experience in the IT industry under his belt, Dmitriy has a wealth of knowledge to share with his readers. He writes on topics related to business management, website & app development, and everything in between.

Headshot

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dmitry-maschenko-b0985057/