WordPress Plugin TroubleshootingWordPress Plugin Troubleshooting

What are the most common problems that all WordPress users face?

WordPress plugin conflict?

If you don’t know how to deal with it or what to focus on, it can be a total disaster. Imagine installing a new plugin or updating something and everything stays the same. The entire site is down. This article reviews the possible causes and conditions of plugin conflicts and provides practical tips for resolving them. If you have encountered this problem before, please wait.

Why are my WordPress plugins having compatibility issues?


Plugins are WordPress extensions created by various developers. WordPress is a dynamic CMS that is constantly updated.

If developers don’t update their plugins to keep up with WordPress updates, plugins become incompatible and create compatibility issues.

Another reason compatibility issues can occur is due to conflicts between different plugins or themes, where the absence of one plugin or theme causes other plugins or themes to not work. Also, if two plugins try to do the same thing in different ways, they might not do anything.

Other causes of plugin compatibility issues include:

  1. Both plugins run the same version of JS.
  2. The plugin installs event handlers on some HTML elements, such as clicks. Event handlers use the prevent() and stopImmediatePropagation() methods. Therefore, event handlers installed by other plugins on the same element will not work on their own.
  3. Plugins use the same filter, so their changes conflict with each other.
  4. Security system plugins may give false positives, so some features may not work.

In this case, the website as a whole may stop working or somehow perform some functions incorrectly. Forms may not work, loading speed may be slow, individual elements may not display, pages may not load.

You can often find advice on the internet to remove and reinstall plugins, but this often does not work.

What should I do to troubleshoot WordPress plugins?


Like anything else, it’s easier to deal with the damage than to deal with the consequences. So here is a list of things you can do regularly to avoid problems with plugins.

Do not install outdated plugins

Choose Regularly updated plugins. Plugins that have not been updated in the last three versions of WordPress are considered outdated. So if the plugin was last updated 1-2 years ago, the latest update Choose Older plugins have potential security holes, outdated PHP syntax It may cause errors or work inefficiently with WordPressCore.

Update the installed plugins.

Updating installed WordPress versions and plugins doesn’t previously, but doesn’t Matches will happen. Sometimes updates wreak havoc, causing security issues and site performance. Invalidates the property. So stay tuned for any new updates.

Install plugins and themes from the same developer.

For example, our JetPlugins work great with the Kava theme. If you install multiple plugins from the same developer, even those They have the same coding standards and use the same frameworks and libraries. So plugins are mainly complementary to each other to work well has been designed. Their updates are synced regularly and compatibility tested before release I do.

Do not install plugins from untrusted developers.

if a company wants to do well, they don’t have to choose their products. You may also run into problems with poor writing or even problems with your site.

Disable automatic updates for WordPress, themes, and plugins make

You don’t control who gets updates and when they get updated. As a result, conflicts may arise, and you may not quickly find out why. Also, some developers are very stable with bugs and glitches Versions with teeth are released.

Test the plugin before installing it on a live network.

You must not make any immediate changes to the website you are running. Because if a conflict occurs, it takes a long time to restore functionality. and plugins for compatibility issues before finalizing your site. It’s best to get tested. There is nothing wrong with it.

Read the documentation and change notes before installation.

Before installing a plugin on your site, you should know its function and rim You have to understand how to set it up. Documentation helps reduce the chances of getting it wrong.

What should you do if a plugin is not compatible?

Each one does something different in a specific context. And it is not a universal recipe.

There are four main scenarios why a plugin can become incompatible and three main error screens.

important! Before performing all the actions below, you must perform the four actions in the following order, and if the error persists, go to the next step.

Clear the browser’s cache (and open the site in incognito mode to see if the error still exists).
Clear the WordPress cache (if you have a cache).
Temporarily disable the cache plugin. If the error disappears, the problem is most likely in the settings.
Go back to your hosting and delete all possible caches there by type.

The main indicator of plugin conflicts

This site has stopped working: white screen of death, error 500, error 503, error 502, fatal, parsing/syntax error. At the same time, the management panel may or may not stop the operation, depending on the error.
You can see the error message at the top/bottom of the web page or across the screen. Usually, this is a Parse error.
No bugs are shown, but some features just stop working, or new/updated plugins don’t work. Often forms, menus and other interactive elements stop working first.

Helpful tips and fixes at this stage:

All errors with status code 5xx (500-511) are related to communication with the server, especially HTTP requests. Here is a complete list of web bugs. If you see errors 502, 503, 504 and 505, contact your host. You most likely have peak loads that the server can’t handle, downtime, something else that only the host/server admin can handle.


A parse/syntax error means that one of the files is corrupted, and the error message shows the file and line of code that caused the error. As a rule, such errors are found when adding custom code, not a robust plugin, but it can also mean a bug in the updated plugin code, etc.

the white curtain of death. If you can’t go to any page on the web and/or the admin panel, this is it. Go to wp-content > Plugins and rename the suspect plugin (eg, add the word _backup to it) and use FTP to disable the plugin that might be broken and it will automatically disable it. The same can be done for subjects if suspected.

Updating the PHP version or increasing the memory limit can also be a solution. But, as a rule, one of the most common causes of the white screen of death is a syntax error in the file functions.php or wp-config.php. Make sure you don’t change anything there. If not, restoring from a backup will surely help you.

Resource: Website

By Pranay Aduvala

Pranay is a software engineer and tech writer with a passion for digital marketing. Combining technical expertise with marketing insights, He write's engaging content on topics like Technology, AI, and digital strategies. With hands-on experience in coding and marketing, Connect with him on LinkedIn for more insights and collaboration opportunities:

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