October 11, 2025
Need help troubleshooting common WordPress errors? You’re in the right place!
We’ve put together this detailed guide to help you quickly fix errors that pop up on your site at the worst times. We cover everything from the 500 Internal Server Error to the 404 Page Not Found error, the parse error, and so much more.
Let’s get started!
Table of Contents
When it comes to finding and fixing WordPress errors, efficiency is key. You don’t want to leave an error lingering on your site for too long, as it can cost you valuable business, ruin the experience for your site visitors, and even harm your SEO.
Although many debugging plugins are available in the WordPress ecosystem, WP Debug Toolkit offers a straightforward way to detect and view PHP and WordPress errors in real-time.
With WP Debug Toolkit, you don’t need to go through the hassle of manually enabling debug mode or error logging with code. A simple click on its user-friendly dashboard activates them.
Once debug mode and error logging are enabled, WP Debug Toolkit begins logging and formatting any errors on your WordPress site immediately. It then displays them in its best-in-class log viewer app for easy tracking. The log viewer is fully searchable, filterable, and easy to read, making error detection easy.
You can also copy the error message and paste it into ChatGPT to find the exact cause and solution. To learn more about WP Debug Toolkit’s log viewer and how to view and access WordPress error logs, read our detailed guide.
It’s now time for us to explore the 15 most common WordPress errors and show you how to resolve them to get your site back online quickly!
The 404 Page Not Found Error is one of the most common WordPress errors. This error occurs when a user tries to visit a page on your website that either does not exist or has been moved. It can be pretty frustrating for your site visitors, and if left unaddressed, it can negatively impact your site’s SEO.
The most common cause of a 404 Page Not Found error is deleting or moving content on your website without setting up a redirect for that URL. It can also occur due to changes in your site’s URL structure, which can create broken links if not managed properly, or from simple typos in the URL.
Sometimes, the error is caused by more technical issues, such as a corrupted .htaccess file, incorrect file permissions, a misconfigured server, plugin conflicts, or DNS issues.
Typos: One of the first steps to fix a 404 error is to double-check the entered URL for typos. For example, if the correct URL of the page you want to visit is https://samplesite/about-us, but you typed https://samplesite/abou-us/, you will automatically get a 404 error just from missing the character “t”.
Permalinks: If the URL isn’t the problem, it might be that your permalinks settings need to be refreshed. To do this, go to your admin dashboard, navigate to Settings › Permalinks, and click Save Changes. This action immediately refreshes your permalinks structure and should fix URL structure issues.
Other fixes you can try if the above don’t work include:
If your website encounters a PHP or database error, you will likely see a blank white screen, known as the White Screen of Death. More recently, depending on your WordPress version and browser type, you might see a generic error message that says “There has been a critical error on your website,” or “This site is experiencing technical difficulties.”
Regardless of the message (or lack thereof), experiencing the White Screen of Death is always stressful for WordPress site admins because it locks you out of your admin dashboard and often requires a lot of trial and error to identify the root cause.
Plugin or theme conflicts are a common cause of the White Screen of Death. However, other issues can also trigger the error. These include:
Resolve plugin conflicts: The first step to fix the White Screen of Death is to disable all plugins on your site to determine if plugin conflicts are the cause. Since you are locked out of your admin dashboard, you’ll need to do this via FTP or your File Manager.
Using either method, go to your site’s root directory, /public_html/, and open the /wp-content/ folder. Find the /plugins/ folder and rename it by adding a suffix or prefix, such as /plugins-deactivated/, to deactivate it.
All plugins will be deactivated immediately, allowing you to refresh your site to see if the error is gone. If it is, log in to your admin dashboard and activate each plugin one by one until you identify the culprit causing the error. Once found, delete that plugin and replace it with an alternative that won’t break your site.
Resolve theme conflicts: If the issue isn’t caused by a plugin, it might be due to theme compatibility issues. Taking a similar approach to how you deactivated your plugins via FTP or File Manager, deactivate your current theme and switch to the default WordPress theme to see if the error goes away.
Other things to try if the issue persists include:
define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '256M');. The memory limit can be raised even higher, such as to 512 MB or 1024 MB.
cURL (Client URL) is a tool that acts as an intermediary between your website and external servers, enabling seamless communication with external services and APIs. For example, cURL is used to integrate features such as social media sharing and payment gateways on your site.
So when you see the “cURL Error 28: Connection Timed Out” error message, it means that the communication between your site and the third-party service failed.
The cURL Error 28 can be caused by any of the following:
Check internet connectivity: The first step to fix the cURL Error 28 is to check your internet connection to make sure slow connectivity isn’t causing the problem.
Disable firewall: If your internet is working correctly and the error persists, temporarily disable the firewall in your security plugin. If the error goes away, reactivate the plugin and use the allowlist feature to prevent future blocks. If that doesn’t work, you might want to try a different security plugin that doesn’t cause the same issue.
Reconfigure SSL Certificate: Check your SSL certificate configuration in your hosting dashboard to ensure it is valid and properly configured. The steps for doing this are pretty straightforward, but if you need some guidance, refer to your hosting provider’s documentation.
Other troubleshooting methods you can try to resolve the cURL Error 28 include:
WordPress provides a server environment guide that offers insights into the recommended cURL version for various WordPress and PHP setups. Ideally, your server should be running cURL version 7.74.0 or higher, OpenSSL 1.1.1 or higher, and PHP 7.4.13 or higher. If not, contact your hosting provider for help upgrading your server.
When your browser sends too many requests to the server in a short period, the server responds with a “429 Too Many Requests” error message. This is basically its way of indicating that you are overwhelming it and need to slow down your requests.
The purpose of this error is to act as a rate-limiting mechanism that restricts how often specific actions on a website can be performed within a certain timeframe, e.g., login attempts. It is an effective way to block malicious bot activity, such as brute-force attacks, web scraping, and DDoS attacks.
The main cause of all “429 Too Many Requests” error messages is server-enforced rate limiting, which stops too many requests from being made within a set period. Some actions that can trigger this include:
Wait and retry again: This is the most logical first step when you encounter the 429 error message, since the server simply needs time to recover from “request overwhelm”. Sometimes, the error message will even categorically state exactly how long you need to wait in seconds before you can perform the same action again. Below is an example of what you might see:
HTTP/1.1 429 Too Many Requests
Content-Type: text/plain
Retry-After: 60
Too many requests. Please wait 60 seconds before trying again.
Optimize your database: You can improve your database’s performance by removing excess data and reducing bloat, either using the built-in optimization tool in phpMyAdmin or by installing a cleanup plugin like WP-Optimize or Advanced Database Cleaner. If you are locked out of your site, you can install the plugins via File Manager in your hosting dashboard or FTP.
In addition to the above methods, you can also try these other fixes to resolve the 429 error.
The 500 Internal Server Error is one of the more confusing errors that can happen on a WordPress site. It occurs when something goes wrong, but the server can’t quite pinpoint the problem. The error message and text displayed when a 500 Internal Server Error occurs can vary depending on the website or web server in use.
Given the vague nature of the 500 Internal Server Error, there are many potential causes. They include:
Since the error doesn’t show details by default, you can use a debugging plugin like WP Debug Toolkit to reveal the actual cause behind the generic message.
Along with identifying the issue, you can also take these steps when faced with a 500 Internal Server Error:
Your WordPress site relies on allocated memory to operate smoothly. However, at times, plugins, themes, site traffic, or media files may exceed this allocated memory during operation. This can cause your site to slow down significantly or crash completely, resulting in error messages like “Fatal error: Out of memory” or “Allowed Memory Size of Bytes Exhausted.”
PHP memory limit exhaustion is the main cause of the Memory Exhausted Error. This can happen due to:
The main way to fix the Memory Exhausted Error is to increase your site’s PHP memory limit. You can do this via your .htaccess file, wp-config.php file, php.ini file, or even with a plugin.
If you’re not sure whether a plugin is causing the memory spike, a debugging tool like WP Debug Toolkit can help identify resource-heavy processes.
Another option is to temporarily disable all plugins and then re-enable them one by one to see if the error resolves.
The “Error Establishing a Database Connection” message appears on your site when it has trouble communicating with your database, which stops it from loading the page. This error not only affects the frontend of your site but also locks you out of your admin dashboard.
Verify your database login credentials in the wp-config.php file, especially if you’ve recently migrated your site to a new host. Incorrect credentials can cause the “Error Establishing a Database Connection” message.
Check whether your MySQL server is down, possibly due to traffic spikes that overload the server. You can confirm this by contacting your hosting provider.
A few other things you can do are to:
define('WP_ALLOW_REPAIR', true);When WordPress runs into issues understanding a part of your website’s code, you get the “Parse error: syntax error, unexpected” message. “Parse error” implies that WordPress could read your code but couldn’t make sense of it, “syntax error” means that there are problems with the code structure, while “unexpected” means you either omitted something or added something that should not be there.
The main cause of the “Parse error: syntax error, unexpected” message is mistakes in your site’s code. These mistakes can include:
Check the error message to see what went wrong. It usually shows the file and line number where the error happened (or sends it to your admin email if you have a newer version of WordPress). If you’re comfortable with basic coding, you can directly access your site’s files through FTP or your hosting File Manager and fix the issue.
You can also:
The “Upload: Failed to Write File to Disk” error occurs when WordPress cannot save files uploaded to your server. These files typically include media uploads, plugins, or themes.
The most common reason the “Upload: Failed to Write File to Disk” Error occurs is incorrect file permissions. However, it can also be caused by low or full disk space on the server or a misconfigured temporary folder.
Review your file and folder permissions to ensure they are set correctly. Files should usually have permissions of 644, while folders should be set to 755. You can easily verify and modify these settings by accessing your site’s files via your host’s File Manager or FTP. This WordPress documentation on Changing File Permissions offers more details.
Contact your hosting provider to clear your site’s temp folder if it is full, as this can cause the “Upload: Failed to Write File to Disk” Error. They can also help you check if you’re running low on disk space, so you can take action to optimize usage or upgrade to a hosting plan with more storage.
When managing your WordPress site, you might encounter situations where you make updates, such as editing a page’s content or adding a new blog post, but then have trouble seeing those changes right away. You may notice that the updates are visible only when you are logged in as an admin but not as a site visitor, or your custom CSS design changes don’t appear on the site’s frontend. Needless to say, this issue can be pretty frustrating.
Caching issues are the most common reason why changes in WordPress don’t immediately show up when you view them. However, other problems, such as coding errors or misconfigured file permissions, can also cause this.
Clear your browser cache to remove old versions of your site’s page that might load instead of the latest updates.
Clear your WordPress cache using a caching plugin like WP Rocket, W3 Total Cache, or WP Super Cache. You can also do it manually by locating the /wp-content/cache/ folder in your site’s root directory via FTP or your File Manager, and then deleting the cache folder.
The “Are you sure you want to do this?” error message appears when WordPress is unable to complete an action you started, such as uploading a file or installing a plugin, due to nonce verification issues. Nonces are security tokens that WordPress uses to mitigate cyberattacks by making sure that scripts are genuinely coming from your website.
Plugins and themes that do not correctly use the nonce verification feature are the leading cause of this error.
Deactivate your plugins to see if one of them is causing the error. If you cannot access your admin dashboard, you can easily do this using FTP or the File Manager in your cPanel by locating and renaming the /plugins/ folder. The error message should go away if a plugin is responsible. Then activate each plugin one at a time to find out which is problematic.
If you have debug logging enabled, which is easy to do with WP Debug Toolkit, you might see nonce-related warnings that point directly to the problematic plugin.
Deactivate your current theme and switch to the default WordPress theme by repeating the steps used to deactivate your plugins. This time, focus on locating and deactivating only the folder for your current theme. Once that’s done, if the theme is causing the issue, the error should go away.
Additionally, you can:
If your website’s proxy server (the server that handles requests for you) gets an invalid response from an upstream server (the server providing the requested service), you will see the “502 Bad Gateway Error” message.
There are several reasons why the 502 Bad Gateway Error might occur on your site. Some of these include:
Reload the web page after some time to see if the error message disappears. If the error was caused by a traffic spike or temporary server maintenance, it will likely resolve on its own within a short time.
Clear your browser cache to remove corrupted data that might be causing the error.
Temporarily disable your firewall and CDN, as firewalls can sometimes unintentionally block harmless server communication and CDNs can be misconfigured.
Check your plugins and themes by deactivating and reactivating them to see if they are causing the error. Sometimes, bad code in third-party programs can cause conflicts that interfere with the server’s processes.
Enable error logging to view your site’s error logs so you can quickly identify the specific cause of the 502 Bad Gateway Error. You can do this manually in wp-config.php, or use a debugging plugin like WP Debug Toolkit to see logs without editing code.
Repair your database using WordPress’ built-in database repair tool or by restoring a recent backup.
Increase PHP max_execution_time and max_input_time to reduce the likelihood of PHP timeouts. You can do this by contacting your hosting service provider.
The Sidebar Below Content Error is one of the most common layout issues encountered by WordPress users. It occurs when the sidebar — which usually contains widgets, navigational links, latest posts, etc. — is displayed below the content rather than beside it.
The most common cause of the Sidebar Below Content Error is errors in your site’s HTML or CSS code. Plugin and theme conflicts can also lead to this error.
Undo any recent changes you made to your site before the sidebar error appeared. This is usually the fastest way to fix the issue.
Other methods you can try to fix the error include: temporarily disabling your plugins to see if a conflict is causing it, switching to the default WordPress theme, clearing your WordPress cache, and repairing any broken HTML tags that might be disrupting the sidebar layout.
Whenever your browser makes a request to the server and no data is received, the ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE error shows up. It basically indicates a communication issue between your browser and the server.
The most common causes of the ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE error include:
Since connectivity issues often cause this error, the troubleshooting steps are simple.
If the error continues, a debugging plugin like WP Debug Toolkit can log whether a script or plugin is failing to respond properly.
When WordPress is in maintenance mode during manual updates to core files, plugins, or themes, it shows the message “Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute.” This message usually appears only for a few seconds or minutes before it automatically disappears. However, if an update is interrupted or fails, WordPress can become stuck in this mode and block access to your site.
The most common reason your site gets stuck in maintenance mode is an interrupted or failed update that leaves the .maintenance file on the server instead of deleting it. Other reasons include:
The simple fix for the maintenance loop error is to manually delete the .maintenance file from your site’s root directory. You can do this by accessing your site’s files via FTP or the File Manager tool provided by your hosting service. Just open the /public_html/ folder, find the .maintenance file, right-click on it, and choose Delete to remove it. After refreshing your website, the error should be gone.
How to Troubleshoot a 404 Error?
There are a few things you can do to troubleshoot a 404 error. These include:
Can plugins cause a 500 Error?
Yes, plugins can cause a 500 error because they are sometimes poorly coded and not regularly updated, which can lead to compatibility issues. They also use up server resources and may not update correctly from time to time. All of these can trigger the 500 error.
What is the default error page in WordPress?
The default error page in WordPress is the 404 Error page, which is displayed when the server cannot locate a requested page. While WordPress offers a standard 404 page, you can create a custom one that matches your site’s design and redirects visitors to other working pages on your site.
What is error 503 in WordPress?
The 503 error in WordPress occurs when your website’s server is overloaded or undergoing maintenance and cannot process any requests. It usually appears as a “503 Service Unavailable” or “503 Service Temporarily Unavailable” message.
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