Is something not working on your WordPress website? It could be a conflict caused by your theme or plugins, and we understand how disruptive this can be for your business. Let’s dive into what a conflict is and go through some simple steps to troubleshoot it without affecting your real visitors. It’s a piece of cake, I promise! However, remember that you need to be logged in to reproduce the issue, as this method won’t work if you’re logged out.
Overview
- Requirements
- What is a Plugin and Theme Conflict
- How to reproduce it while logged-in WordPress site
- Using the Health Check & Troubleshooting plugin
- How to move forward after identifying a WordPress Plugin or Theme conflict
- How to immediately fix the WordPress Plugin or Theme conflict and investigate it further
- Tips from an expert preventing WordPress Plugin or Theme conflict
Requirements
- WordPress Website
- Logged in the WordPress Dashboard (most of the time on yourdomain.com/wp-admin)
- Health Check & Troubleshooting plugin
What is a Plugin and Theme Conflict
When building a website, you might encounter issues where things stop working, often due to plugin or theme conflicts. WordPress allows for functionality extensions through plugins and themes, but not all combinations work perfectly together. A plugin or theme conflict arises when a component interferes with essential website functions, causing critical errors or broken styles.
How to reproduce it while logged-in WordPress site
An important step to take when facing a plugin or theme conflict is to understand how to reproduce it (even something like “when I access my website” matters) as it’s impossible to fix something we can’t reproduce; the issue must be visible.
So, take a deep breath, open your favorite text editor, and take your phone, a pen, or anything that can help you to write down each step to reproduce it. It’ll be crucial to help you go through the same steps when troubleshooting it; so go ahead and take note of how to reproduce it (it’s pretty useful in case you decide to contact a support guy from your hosting for example). Remember to ensure this is reproducible when logged in, logged-out, or in both ways.
Using the Health Check & Troubleshooting plugin
The Health Check & Troubleshooting plugin is made by the WordPress community and allows you to have a clean session where you can disable all plugins and switch your theme without affecting your website until you disable this mode or log out. If a specific plugin or theme is breaking your website (allowing you to access the WordPress Dashboard) and reproducible when logged in, this plugin is perfect!
To install it, go to your WordPress Dashboard > Plugins > Add New Plugin.
Search by “Troubleshooting”, find the Health Check & Troubleshooting on the results, and click on “Install Now”, then “Activate”.
After it’s activated, go to Tools > Site Health on the WordPress Dashboard sidebar at the left and you’ll notice four tabs: Status, Info, Troubleshooting, and Tools; The plugin is responsible for adding the troubleshooting and tools ones. For now, let’s focus on the troubleshooting and let the Tools to a different post Exploring WordPress Health Check: A Deep Dive into the Tools Tab.
When clicking on Troubleshooting, click on the blue button labeled Enable Troubleshooting, which will take you back to the initial Dashboard page, but with the Troubleshooting Mode on the top bar to allow you to deactivate plugins and theme without affecting your users.
You can also disable plugins and themes from the Plugin’s and Theme’s list.
You can go ahead and deactivate or activate the plugin until the issue is resolved, which means you found the plugin or theme that’s causing an issue on your website without affecting the real visitors. Disable the troubleshooting mode from the top bar or Tools > Site Health > Troubleshooting and go to the next section!
How to move forward after identifying a WordPress Plugin or Theme conflict
When the plugin or theme conflict is identified, the next step is to contact the plugin or theme support team to ask for more details on why it has been happening with your website; there are many reasons a conflict can happen like PHP version, plugin or theme versions or updates, and so on. So contact immediately the support sharing how disabling the plugin or theme solved the conflict and the team should help you further.
How to immediately fix the WordPress Plugin or Theme conflict and investigate it further
Disabling the plugin or theme that’s conflicting is the immediate fix, but it’s not possible on many websites as it’d affect the site functionality and lose sales as a consequence. That’s why backups are important, so get used to saving backups before updating plugins, themes, or WordPress. Learn How to Create a Full WordPress Backup with an All-in-One WP Migration Free Plugin and restore it when the site is working fine; after that, if your hosting company offers, create a staging environment and test for conflict until it’s safe to do the same on production environment.
Remember to delete unused Backup files from your website’s folder to avoid taking space on your server unnecessarily.
Tips from an expert preventing WordPress Plugin or Theme conflict
Dealing with Plugin or Theme conflicts is part of a Customer Support Agent’s work routine, so I can share some tips based on my whole experience.
- Keep Everything Updated: Regularly update WordPress core, themes, and plugins. Outdated software is a common cause of conflicts but always save a backup.
- Use a Staging Environment: Always test new plugins or major updates on a staging site before applying them to your live site (Rocket.net offers it on any hosting plan).
- Implement Incremental Changes: When adding new functionality, install and activate one plugin at a time. This makes it easier to identify the source of any conflicts.
- Choose Reputable Plugins: Stick to plugins from the official WordPress repository or well-known developers. These are more likely to follow WordPress coding standards and be compatible with other plugins.
- Read Plugin Documentation: Before installing a new plugin, read its documentation to understand its functionality and potential conflicts with existing plugins.
- Monitor Site Performance: Use tools like Query Monitor to track your site’s performance. Sudden changes can indicate a plugin conflict.
- Regularly Clean Your Database: Remove unused post revisions, transients, and other unnecessary data that can slow down your site and cause conflicts.
- Limit Plugin Usage: Only use essential plugins. The more plugins you have, the higher the chance of conflicts.
- Check for Plugin Alternatives: Look for alternatives that offer similar functionality but might be more compatible with your setup.
- Use Child Themes: Always use a child theme when customizing your site’s appearance. This prevents losing customizations during theme updates and reduces the risk of conflicts.
- Maintain Good Hosting: Ensure your hosting environment meets or exceeds WordPress requirements as Rocket.net does. Insufficient server resources can exacerbate plugin conflicts.
- Keep Detailed Notes: Whenever you make changes to your site, keep a log. This can help you backtrack if issues arise later.
- Regular Backups: Always have a recent backup before making any changes. This provides a safety net if conflicts cause major issues.