Updating WordPress is a fundamental, regular, and essential thing to do for all those webmasters who have a WordPress-based website. However, during a WordPress site update, it is likely to face website issues or downtime due to the incompatibility of plugins with the theme or the PHP version. Many newbie web developers and webmasters get stuck with this issue when they attempt to update the plugins on their WordPress website on their own.
In this blog post, I have shared six steps to troubleshoot WordPress plugins if your website isn’t working correctly after an update.
Step 1: Analysing
The very first step after updating a WordPress website is to check all the significant features of the website quickly. This is to ensure that your website does not show any warnings or errors to the users.
In some cases, after a website update, it may also show a blank page (aka White Screen Of Death) that shows nothing but a white blank screen. Whichever the case, you must look out for a possible error quickly and carefully.
Step 2: Troubleshooting
Now that you know, there is a problem with your WordPress website after an update. The next step is to disable all the plugins that you have used for your website and enable them one by one to find out the faulty plugin.
When you re-enable any plugin, check your website to see if it shows errors. Repeat this process until you re-activate the plugin that is causing the issue on the website, to identify the culprit.
Step 3: Check for Compatibility
Once you find the culprit plugin that’s causing the issue on your website, the next step is to find out its latest version if available on the plugin’s developer website or WordPress repository. It’s very usual for plugin developers to launch or distribute the latest releases of their plugins. They may upgrade their plugin, fix any existing errors, or simply add new features to it. Whichever the case, a professional web developer will always make their latest version of the plugin available to its users (through WordPress repository or their site).
Step 4: Update/replace Plugin
If a newer version of the plugins is available, install & activate it on your website to see if the error gets resolved. However, if there is no latest version of the plugin available anywhere, try to find an alternative plugin that you can use as a replacement for the culprit plugin. Do note that you must take a full backup before making any changes to your site.
Tip/Advice:
Use a Staging Site
The first piece of advice is to ensure that you make all the required changes to a staging website and not the live one. Especially, if you don’t have any experience in working with WordPress plugins & codes, you must always try first on the staging site.
Consult a WordPress Developer
Never shy away from hiring a WordPress developer if there is any such need. If troubleshooting and error fixing are taking up too much of your time, you must quickly hire a WordPress expert who can not only fix errors on your site but can also help to upgrade and maintain your website.