You’ve just updated something on your WordPress site when something goes horribly wrong. The error message displays, “The site is experiencing technical difficulties.”
Your heart sinks. This WordPress error is uninformative, unimaginative. With no idea how to fix it or what you did wrong, it’s hard to know what step to take next.
Luckily, if you’ve updated your WordPress to 5.2+, there’s a clue hidden in the error. WordPress 5.2 introduced a new way to alert you to PHP errors that would otherwise result in your site displaying a blank page (also known as WSoD: The White Screen of Death).
Instead of the WSoD occurring after a fatal PHP error, there are now two new messages, namely:
- “The site is experiencing technical difficulties.” This one occurs for public pages only.
- “The site is experiencing technical difficulties. Please check your site admin email inbox for instructions.” This one happens when you try to go to a wp-admin page.
In this article by our team at wpDataTables, we’ll walk you through how you can fix the “The site is experiencing technical difficulties” error all by yourself. Read on to save your site from unnecessary downtime.
What’s the meaning of this error?
The “the site is experiencing technical difficulties” WordPress error message is simply a generic error that could mean many things. Don’t worry, it doesn’t mean that your site has been deleted or is completely broken. There is usually an easy solution.
As mentioned, WordPress 5.2 and above will typically show this error when there is a problem with invalid PHP code. A likely culprit is either a theme or a plugin update, or perhaps even a core WordPress update.
In rare cases, the error message will show when there’s actually nothing wrong — instead, your website is simply in the process of an automatic update. The error message will show until the update is completed. This can happen even though the message you’re supposed to receive is “Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute.”
If the error persists for longer than, say, 10 minutes, then you can be sure that there’s a real problem somewhere. Let’s investigate and solve this!
How to fix “The site is experiencing technical difficulties.”
The easiest way to start out is to put WordPress in debug mode. This will make WordPress display any PHP errors it encounters whenever you try to access your site. You can also set debug mode to produce a log file you can look at while preventing the error from being shown publicly.
Debug mode
With your WordPress hosting cPanel, you can go through File Manager to do this, or you can FTP into your server directly. The file should be in your root WordPress directory.
- To set up debug mode to create a private log file, you’ll need to add the following code. You can add it anywhere above /* That’s all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */
define('WP_DEBUG', true);
define('WP_DEBUG_LOG', true);
define( 'WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', false );
- Once you’ve added the above lines, hit save and then refresh a page on your site.
- Go to the /wp-content/ folder in File Manager or FTP to see the file log.
- What you’re searching for is a line reading ‘PHP Fatal Error:’.
An example:
PHP Fatal error: Cannot redeclarebp_members_screen_display_profile() (previously declared in /.../buddypress/bp-members/screens/profile.php:22) in /.../buddypress/bp-members/screens/profile.php on line 32
As you can see, it shows the path where the website issue lies. It even shows the file name and name of the plugin causing the issue. Read carefully to figure out exactly which theme or plugin caused the problem.
This way, you’ll know whether the problem was a plugin, theme, or WordPress core issue.
Once you know, you can delete the theme or plugin that’s causing the problem and voila, your site should be back in action!
Now you should get in touch with the creator of the theme or plugin to tell them you had this problem so they can fix the bug. Of course, you could always try to fix it yourself based on the error message, but if you do try to do so, remember to back up your site files first.
After you’ve finished, take out the code lines you added to your wp-config.php file and save.
Solve theme conflicts
- To check if the problem was with a theme, you need to find your theme in your File Manager or FTP program. Click wp-content and then find your theme.
- Rename your active theme. You can then check if wp-admin starts working again. If it does, the issue was caused by your theme.
- If the issue was your theme, contact the author to let them know about the bug. They can help you solve the problem.
- If nothing changes, change your theme back to its original name. The problem was not caused by your theme.
Solve plugin conflicts
- If you can’t get into the WordPress admin section, access the public_html directory with your File Manager or FTP.
- Navigate to wp-content, then plugins, and rename the plugins folder. Afterward, reload your site. If that works, the problem was one of your plugins.
- If indeed the issue was caused by a plugin you can change the name of your plugins folder back.
- Now, start changing each plugin name to another name and back one at a time to see which was causing a problem. When you figure it out, delete the culprit.
Upgrade your version of PHP
- The issue might be because you haven’t switched to the newest PHP. You might see a PHP fatal error because your version isn’t supported by WordPress anymore. Any version of PHP less than 5.6 doesn’t work anymore.
- Even if you’re running PHP 5.6, you might encounter the “The site is experiencing technical difficulties” error, so to avoid the error in the future, it’s advised that you update your PHP to 7+.
- To make sure that your theme and plugin work with the latest PHP version, use the PHP Compatibility Checker.
Hey, did you know data can be beautiful too?
wpDataTables can make it that way. There’s a good reason why it’s the #1 WordPress plugin for creating responsive tables and charts.
And it’s really easy to do something like this:
- You provide the table data
- Configure and customize it
- Publish it in a post or page
And it’s not just pretty, but also practical. You can make large tables with up to millions of rows, or you can use advanced filters and search, or you can go wild and make it editable.
“Yeah, but I just like Excel too much and there’s nothing like that on websites”. Yeah, there is. You can use conditional formatting like in Excel or Google Sheets.
Did I tell you you can create charts too with your data? And that’s only a small part. There are lots of other features for you.
FAQs about fixing the site is experiencing technical difficulties
1. What does it mean when a website is experiencing technical difficulties?
When a website is having technical issues, it signifies that there is a problem with the infrastructure or functionality of the website that prevents it from functioning as it should. There may be a little problem that only affects a small area of the website, or there may be a significant outage that prevents access to the entire website.
2. How can I tell if a website is experiencing technical difficulties?
An error message or other warning will typically be displayed on a website to let users know when there are technical issues. Also, users might discover that some website services or pages are inaccessible or not functioning properly.
3. What should I do if I receive an error message stating that the website is experiencing technical difficulties?
Try refreshing the page or restarting your browser if you see an error message warning that a website is having technical problems to see if the problem goes away. If the issue still exists, you can try visiting the website via a different network or device to see if the issue is unique to your current configuration. You might have to wait for the website to fix the problem if none of these steps work.
4. Who should I contact if a website I use regularly is experiencing technical difficulties?
You can try contacting the website’s customer service or help desk for assistance if a website you frequently use is having technical problems. They might be able to offer advice on how to solve the problem or give a rough timetable for when it will be fixed.
5. Can I fix a website that is experiencing technical difficulties on my own?
Most of the time, individuals are unable to resolve a website’s technical issues on their own. These issues are frequently the result of coding or infrastructure issues, which demand for technical knowledge to fix.
6. How long does it usually take for a website to fix technical difficulties?
Depending on the type and seriousness of the problem, it might take a website a broad range of time to resolve technical issues. While significant outages might take days or even weeks to completely address, minor faults might be fixed in a matter of hours.
7. Why do websites experience technical difficulties in the first place?
Many factors, such as server outages, coding mistakes, software bugs, security breaches, and other problems relating to the website’s architecture or functioning, can cause technical challenges for websites.
8. What kind of technical difficulties are the most common for websites?
Server outages, software glitches, code mistakes, and security breaches are among the most typical technical issues with websites. These problems may lead to slow page loads, broken links, error messages, and other problems that impair the functioning and user experience of the website.
9. Can technical difficulties on a website cause me to lose my data or information?
Technical issues with a website may result in users losing their data or information. Any information entered, for instance, may be lost if a user is in the process of filling out a form when the website crashes. The majority of websites do, however, have backup procedures in place to guard against data loss in the event of technical issues.
10. Is it safe to continue using a website that has been experiencing technical difficulties?
Depending on the type and extent of the technical issues. It might be OK to keep using the website if there are only minor problems with it that do not compromise the security of user data or information. Users should use caution and think about stopping their usage of the website if there are significant outages or security breaches, though, until the problem has been entirely fixed.
Ending thoughts on how to fix the “The site is experiencing technical difficulties” error
- In this article, we’ve covered 4 possible ways to fix the “The site is experiencing technical difficulties” error message. If you tried the first method and you couldn’t figure out what’s wrong with the debug messages, undo what you did and try to solve the plugin or theme conflicts with troubleshooting.
- It’s important to always undo the changes you’ve made if you were unsuccessful in solving the error. Otherwise, you might end up with more problems down the line.
If you enjoyed reading this article on how to fix “the site is experiencing technical difficulties”, you should check out this one about the WordPress plugin update failure.
We also wrote about a few related subjects like how to fix installation failed, could not create a directory, WordPress links not working, how to fix “your connection is not private”, how to fix sorry, this file type is not permitted for security reasons and the link you followed has expired.
