Trouble shooting WordPress
It happens every so often… I get an email and /or support ticket hollering HELP!!!!
WordPress and being open source has a lot of advantages. The number of themes and plugins makes it easy to set you blog apart from others. The problem comes when you have hundreds, if not thousands of different programmers writing script to interact with each other.
One of the big things you should do is every time you add or change any one thing is to check your blog. This way you will know right away when you get a conflict. If you don’t and all of a sudden find your blog in disarray of some time here are some easy steps to find the problem.
Most problems are created because of conflicts in plugins or themes. It is one of the reasons I am always running a special test blog to make sure the pieces I want to use are compatible.
The first thing I do when there is a problem is to go back to the default theme. If that fixes the problem then I have a starting point. I now know there is an incompatibility with something I changed and the theme.
Now if I had just edited something in the theme I have a good idea I created the problem (this includes adding widgets not just editing the code) but if not it is probably between the theme and a plugin.
If it is not fixed or I want to maintain my current theme it is time to figure out which plugin is giving me trouble. Go back to your original theme and then deactivate all of your plugins.
Make sure that things are working properly with no plugins on. If they are not you definitely have a problem with your theme. If you have made any changes to the code of the theme upload your original theme files and this will fix it most times.
Now if your theme is working fine without the plugins activated it is time to activate them one by one and check each time that the problem does not reoccur. If it does you now know which plugin is causing the problem.
Change the theme back to the default and see if that fixes the problem. If it does then you need to get rid of either the theme or the plugin. If it does not then it may be a conflict between plugins.
Now if you are using quite a few plugins it may be a conflict between them. Again it is just a matter of activating and deactivating them to find which ones play nice together and a decision on your part as to which are more important to you.
As there are quite often more than one plugin to handle different aspects switching to a different one may solve the problem.
So to summarize it is just a matter of testing one thing at a time until you find the problem. Not fun but it works;) .
About the author
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Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. |
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6 comments
Barbara Ling, Virtual Coach on November 11, 2009 at 6:53 am
I love the ‘deactivate your plugins’ comment – it’s very true, but wow, can it be very painful indeed if you have 30 or so running!
I hate it when I have to debug….
.-= Barbara Ling, Virtual Coach´s last blog ..The Great Eyeglasses SCAM β Simple Ways to AVOID Being Ripped Off =-.
Alex on November 11, 2009 at 8:02 am
I face this when I do an upgrade Mike.
I suppose I should deactivate the plugins, upgrade WP and then reactivate them but some are so important I’m reluctant to deactivate them.
Some need a fair degree of customisation – would I lose that if I deactivate them?
I mostly find it is a plugin conflict – very tedious to track down when you have 30 or so!!
.-= Alex´s last blog ..Banishing Keyword Confusion =-.
Earl Netwal on November 11, 2009 at 11:29 am
Seems like a methodical approach. Hate to think of having to do it too often, but the approach makes sense. Wondering about your test blog. Do you maintain it just to test for incompatible plug ins for your other blogs, do you use the same set up for all your blogs? Or do you have more than one test blog?
.-= Earl Netwal´s last blog ..Ten Ways a Good Article Distribution Service Benefits You =-.
Mike on November 11, 2009 at 12:39 pm
I only have one and I use different themes but use the same basic plugins on most. The blog is more for beta testing so I know what to recommend and what is changing before the new releases come out.
Joel Osborne on November 11, 2009 at 9:36 pm
Great advice! I guess one down point to WordPress is how easy it can be to add plugins and change the theme. It’s great to be able to do quickly, but I can see now how it could result in some issues when updating and adding multiple scripts.
.-= Joel Osborne´s last blog ..Blog World Tour β Become A Blog Star! =-.
Doug Champigny on November 14, 2009 at 4:45 am
Another great post in your back-to-blogging-basics series Mike – I hope you’re going to compile this series into a report when it’s completed so that the information will still be easy for people to access!
.-= Doug Champigny´s last blog ..Internet Super Stars Conference β Meet Teri & Doug Champigny Live In Orlando! =-.