8 Server Issues Affecting WordPress – and How We Can Fix Them
In the following article, we will try to give WordPress website owners a little idea about the malfunctions and malfunctions of their WordPress website.
We often don’t have a dedicated WordPress expert who focuses on our WordPress site, so it’s sometimes easy for us to forget that WordPress problems are due to plugin issues, a hacked user, or a corrupted theme.
Sometimes the problem is on the server side.
In my experience, it’s not that easy to work with web hosting companies when it comes to problems with your website. Because you bought a very cheap package and they don’t provide support for it, or because their support team is not skilled enough to deal with the problems.
And unfortunately, sometimes you find yourself working with an unreliable company that won’t want to admit that their server stops working due to faulty infrastructure.
Despite all this, you should probably fix these problems as soon as possible.
Users will not be happy with a website that is unresponsive, slow, or nonexistent, even if they knew that the root of the problem was the server.
The quick solution to these server problems is to understand what problems may arise from the server.
By understanding the source of these problems, you can confidently and effectively address them with your website host.
8 server issues that can affect your WordPress site:
It’s discouraging to think that despite all the hard work you put into optimizing your WordPress site…
Something could still go wrong with the website.
And worst of all, the problem could be unrelated to anything you did, and your customers are still frustrated with your website, because they expect it to be fast and high-quality with a maximum browsing experience.
Server problems are tricky, you will waste all your time searching for the solution through WordPress and the database, even through the plugins and themes. But in the end you will realize the problem is with the server, so what can you do?
Here you will find some more and less common problems that can arise on your WordPress site.
Some of them you can quickly resolve yourself, and some will require help from your website host.
1) The pages are loading too slowly –
Let’s say you’ve done absolutely everything to make WordPress fast.
If you’ve verified that the problem isn’t with your internet connection, you can check this with a simple speed test.
It’s time to check the server.
First, check the server status of your website host.
Any reported issues will usually result in your site being unavailable – but it’s still worth checking.
Most web hosting companies will include a page called “server status” or “system status.”
If something is wrong with the servers, you’ll be able to find it there.
If this is the reason for the speed issue – contact your website host to understand when the problem will be resolved.
If the case repeats itself regularly – with the same symptoms of slowdown, you should talk to one of the support managers and ask if there is a “neighboring” website on the server that is affecting the speed of your website.
If this is the reason, it would be time to upgrade to cloud hosting or VPS.
If there is no availability issue with the site, you will need to check the server bandwidth.
If your website is experiencing a traffic spike and you have prepared for it in advance, then bandwidth throttling may be the cause of the slowness or unavailability.
If your website traffic is increasing, your hosting package may not be enough to handle that new traffic. In that case, you should consider upgrading your hosting package.
2) Not receiving emails –
With most web hosting packages, you can create an email address under your website domain.
For example, if your website is called www.hostcenter.co.il then you would probably want to create an email address like sales@hostcenter.co.il.
However, what do you do if you have connected all your contact forms to those emails and even configured the email addresses on your WordPress site, but not a single email is arriving? Let’s say your visitors copy and paste your email into the “To:” field and you have typed your email address correctly in your WordPress site’s content management system, this means that you need to correct the outgoing mail server or sending email box settings.
First, send yourself a message to this email address from your alternate email address. In fact, ask a few other people to do the same. If no one gets a notification that their inbox is full, then the problem isn’t with the server storage space.
Then, if you are moving messages from your hosting provider’s email to another account, make sure the problem is not related to how you set up your email box with the new provider, you may need to make adjustments to the settings of the new hosting provider.
In your email app’s settings, you should find a section dedicated to email accounts and forwarding. Make sure your email settings are listed there and match the instructions from your storage provider. If everything is set up correctly, you should be able to access and log in to your storage account.
Navigate to the email management tool in your hosting account. From there, you can open your inbox and confirm that emails are arriving. If they are not, then the problem is with the configuration, which means you should contact your web host to ask them to look into the issue.
3) Updates not visible on the website.
Caching your WordPress site seems like such an easy thing to implement and gain control over with the many WordPress caching plugins available.
But let’s say you already have a cache installed and configured. You’ve tried clearing your browser, and you’ve also opened your site from a different browser and device. You’ve even tried deleting all your browsing data, cookies, and history. Still, the changes you made to your site don’t show up in the final view.
It could be that your “cache_temp” folder is malfunctioning or it could be something else entirely on your hosting side. If it’s a server-side caching issue, you’ll need to contact your hosting support for assistance.
4) “The server does not exist.” – server not found
If you (or your visitors) see a blank page with a message saying “The server does not exist,” you need to log in to your website hosting account.
This type of error message usually indicates that your account has been suspended in some way. Maybe your domain name or hosting package hasn’t been renewed, maybe your bandwidth and storage have exceeded the limits of the package you purchased, or maybe your hosting provider has decided to suspend your account for some other reason. Whatever the case, you need to contact them in order to get your site back up and running.
5) “Error establishing a database connection.” – error establishing a database connection
Technically, you are responsible for any problems that occur with your website’s database. However, there are times when this error may appear in the final display of your website and is unrelated to anything you did.
First, make sure the information in your wp-config.php file is correct. Specifically, look at the username, password, and repository fields. If anything is wrong there, update, save, and test your site.
When there is a database connection error, but everything looks fine in wp-config, there are usually two other reasons for this.
The first is that your website has been hacked. Then, your next step should be to run a security scan. You can run this scan using our Defender security plugin, or use one of these other free security scanning tools.
If no breach was detected, contact your website host. Similar to issue #4, your provider may have taken it upon themselves to temporarily disable your database due to excessive usage or other contractual breach.
It’s also possible that these are issues with their server that haven’t been reported to users yet.
Contacting them is the best way to figure out what the problem is.
6) Memory error.
When this error occurs, you will see a white screen, or you will see a “critical error” detailing how much memory has been used. This usually happens directly after you try to install a WordPress plugin or theme file that exceeds the allowed limit.
If you see this error, the fix is pretty simple. First, restore your site to the state it was in before you tried to upload the plugin or theme. Then, if you want to try installing the plugin again, increase the default PHP memory limit.
To increase PHP memory, log in to your control panel account and navigate to the file manager or FTP.
Open the wp-config.php file and then add the following code to increase the memory limit:
define(‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ’64M’);
If you try to install the plugin or theme again and see the same error, you may need to increase the memory limit by editing php.ini , as suggested by the WordPress codex,
This is something you will need to ask your web hosting company to do.
7) Maximum execution time exceeded error.
This is similar to how default memory limits can cause WordPress to “break” when you exceed them. In this case, if you see an error telling you that a requested task is taking too long to complete, you should increase the execution time in the backend.
In your file manager, open your .htaccess file for editing. This file is usually hidden from view, so be sure to “unhide” any hidden files before opening your cPanel.
Then, save a copy of the .htaccess file. Click Edit and add the following line to the file:
php_value max_execution_time 60
This will give the server a little more time to process the requested task. If this still doesn’t work, you should contact your website hosting provider. There may be something else they can do on their end – like edit the limits in php.ini – to accommodate the request.
8) “Internal server error”
Although this error tells you that the problem is with the web server, the fault does not always lie with the server, but this error can also appear if you have installed a corrupted plugin or theme.
If your plugins and design are not the problem, then it means that the server configurations need to be changed.
You can fix this yourself or contact our support team, which consists of WordPress supporters, and we will be happy to assist you in resolving the issue.
To fix this yourself, you must first check PHP’s memory limit.
If you have already fixed this in step 6 and the internal server problem still appears – in this situation, it is recommended to replace the htaccess file because it may be what is causing the problem.
To do this, go to your file manager or FTP and find the file. Rename it to “.htaccess old”. If the error no longer appears in WordPress, then there is one more step left to take.
Open the WordPress settings tab and locate the permalinks. Every time you make changes to this settings page—even if all you do is click the “Save” button—your server automatically resets the .htaccess file:
So, click the “Save” button,
If rewriting .htaccess doesn’t work, there’s one more thing you can try before contacting your web host. Basically, you need to revert your main server files back to their original installation state. Specifically, you need to replace wp-includes and wp-admin.
Go to the WordPress website and download a fresh installation of WordPress.
Open the file and find the wp-includes and wp-admin folders.
Then go back to your file manager. From here, you can upload the original WordPress folders for wp-includes and wp-admin. This essentially erases any corruption that may have existed in the latest version of your files.
Once you replace them, exit and return to WordPress. If you continue to see the internal server error even after refreshing your screen, contact your web host for further assistance.
In conclusion
When something goes wrong with WordPress, it can be frustrating, especially when your visitors expect a fast and smooth browsing experience on your site.
Hopefully the server issues above give you a better idea of what might be going on behind the scenes.
And if the solutions I suggested don’t work, at least you’ll have an idea of what to say to your website host when you contact them. You may not be able to fix it, but you’ll have the knowledge to help get it done quickly.
The article was translated from Hebrew to English by Yahav Bengiat (all rights reserved to Susanna Sacasa)
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