This guest post was written by Neil Matthews, a WordPress consultant at WPDude.
Over the years, I’ve developed a troubleshooting methodology while working with my WordPress technical support clients. My methodology helps to solve the majority of WordPress crashed sites I’ve come across, and I wanted to share it with you, the good readers of ProBlogger.
I cannot claim that I invented the process, but I have brought together a number of useful tips from the WP community and combined them to create a repeatable and verifiable way to isolate and troubleshoot WordPress problems.
The process
This methodology isolates the various layers of a WordPress site one at a time, tests a layer by removing its component parts, and then, if the problem still exists, moves down to test the next layer.
Once you have isolated the problematic component, you can remove it from your site and troubleshoot the problem itself.
I recommend doing this in a slow and ordered manner, incrementally testing each layer as you go. Look at a layer, disable all of the components, and slowly restart them to find out where the problem lies.
The layers
I like to divide WordPress into four layers:
- plugins
- theme
- WordPress core
- database.
This methodology looks at the first three layers only.
What can this process fix?
This methodology can be used to fix a variety of WordPress issues including, bit not limited to:
- the dreaded "white screen of death" where all you can see is a white screen and nothing else
- “Header Already Sent” errors
- “Fatal Plugin” errors
- “Out of Memory” errors
- …many other WordPress problems, too.
Back up first
Even if your site has crashed, it’s important to stop, take a moment, and back up your site as it is now. You are...
