Your website is an essential aspect of your business. It might even be your primary source of revenue. When you experience an issue with your WordPress site, it can cause significant disruptions. This is enough to send anyone into a panic.
Fortunately, most of the common problems WordPress users face with their sites have simple solutions. Chances are, you can fix the error you’re experiencing quickly.
In this post, we’ll discuss how problems with your website can be disruptive to your business. Then we’ll walk you through five common WordPress errors and show you how to troubleshoot and resolve them. Let’s get started!
How website errors can disrupt your business
If you’re like most people, you rely on your WordPress site to manage and market your business. From conducting e-commerce operations to providing customer support, your website is a vehicle for delivering your products and services.
When your site goes down or certain pages aren’t loading properly, it can create a domino effect of problems for your business. In addition to negatively impacting user experience, website errors make it difficult and sometimes impossible to complete daily tasks.
WordPress is a powerful and (usually) high-performing platform. If it unexpectedly throws an error at you, there’s a reason behind it. The good news is, it’s probably one you can solve with just a little guidance.
5 common WordPress errors (and how to fix them)
Before troubleshooting for any error, it’s important to first create a backup of your site. That way, if something goes wrong while you’re attempting to resolve the issue, you’ll have a copy you can restore.
Once that’s out of the way, consider these five common types of WordPress errors and their quick fixes.
1. Parse or syntax errors
When it comes to WordPress, a parse or syntax error is a ‘good’ problem to have. The resulting message usually tells you exactly what’s causing the issue and where to go to fix it.
If you receive a syntax error message, it likely means there’s something wrong with your code. More specifically, it’s usually attributed to a missing punctuation mark or misuse of parentheses or brackets. The notification should tell you which file contains the problem, as well as which line it’s in:
In the example above, the syntax error message indicates the problem is in the functions.php file of the Twenty Sixteen theme. It also points to line 73 of the code.
To resolve this issue, you can locate and edit the file listed in the error message using a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) client such as FileZilla. If you’re unfamiliar with this method of accessing your site’s server, you might want to reference a guide from your web host.
Once you access the file and locate the line
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This article was written by Will Morris and originally published on ManageWP.