WordPress is truly fail-proof most of the time, as long as it is running in a healthy environment with updated plugins and themes. However, weve probably all encountered an error or odd behavior at least once in our tenure as WordPress site owners. Below are a handful of very common hiccups one may encounter in WordPress 3.4+, and the quick and simple solution.
Spam
Nothing is more annoying than logging into WordPress to find 100 crazy comments pending, or even worse, check your Inbox to find 100 spam emails from your WordPress sites contact form. Spam is internet lingo for unwanted and often auto-generated advertisements or malware emails or comments. If left unchecked, Spam can quickly fill a database, ruin your sites SEO ranking or reputation and leave your site vulnerable to attack. Thankfully it is easily dealt with through any number of plugins available in the wordpress.org plugin repository, such as Akismet and Really Simple Captcha.
404 Not Found!
This error will sometimes turn up when you switch themes, use custom page templates or update WordPress. It is almost always an issue with WordPress not being able to find the content you asked for using the URL it remembers that content being at. The real URL to your post or page is complicated and unattractive, so most plugins and themes prefer URLs called Pretty Permalinks, which is your typical http://www.yoursite.com/post-title/. If the URLs are not rewritten into permalinks for some reason, a 404 will result. Fix it by simply re-saving your settings:
- Go to Settings > Permalinks
- Select Post Name and click Save. (Save even if this was already selected)
Styling changes don't seem to take effect
You've been hard at work mocking up a glorious design modification and dive into the custom.css or WordPress Customizer only to find nothing you do is having an affect when you reload the page. How frustrating! Some thing to check are:
- The first thing to check is if you've emptied your browser cache prior to getting started. It is also a good idea to disable any caching plugins in WordPress or caching features on your web host temporarily so you can be sure that what you are seeing is the most immediate version of the site as possible.
- In the WordPress customizer, you may need to Save and reload the page to see your changes if the preview does not show you your choices right away.
- Some themes use images for the background, and will not be overwritten if you select just a color in the Background Options or Customizer. Either upload a new image, or use CSS to set the background style instead.
- Verify the folder permissions in your WordPress install and theme folder. All folders should be 755 with the exception of any cache folders, and all files 644.
Sliders, Toggles or Styling suddenly breaks
If your theme uses jQuery elements such as sliders, toggles and other interactive coolness, it can easily break by introducing a plugin that doesnt play nice. The jQuery library is very picky about only being included once in a site, and if your plugins author tries to include it again or fails to use WordPress standards in coding, it can create chaos on your website. The fastest fix for this one is to disable your plugins, reload your page to verify it goes back to normal, then re-enable your plugins one at a time whilst reloading after each activation. Once the site breaks, you will know which plugin is the culprit and can search for a more compatible or updated version that does what you need.
Warning: file_get_contents... error
An error like the one below may appear on your update pages, when trying to upload files or images, or in other areas of your admin panel:
Warning: file_get_contents(http://www.asitename.com/file.extl) [function.file-get-contents]: failed to open stream. ... on line 19
In almost every case, this is due to your hosting provider having strict security defaults in your PHP configuration. PHP is the code library WordPress and your theme use to run, so it is important to understand the basics of what you can and cannot do with it. You can attempt to resolve this yourself if you have access to the php.ini file on your web server. If so, you can edit the file to find allow_url_fopen = Off and change the value to "On" so it says allow_url_fopen = On .
If you can't edit your php.ini, you may email the error message to your hosting provider and ask them to enable allow_url_fopen for you.
With the above pointers under your belt, you will be better equipped to deal with the little problems that may come your way. Should a big one occur, dont fret! You are always welcome to ask us for some insight or direction on the Support Forums, or, if you know your issue is related to WordPress, there is a huge and helpful support community waiting to help you over at wordpress.org.
