Solve most plugin and theme problems by deactivating the plugin or theme causing them, which you can do even when your site’s dashboard won’t load. This guide covers how to bring your site back online first, and then how to identify which plugin or theme caused the problem.
Installing plugins is available on all WordPress.com paid plans: Personal, Premium, Business, and Commerce plans. For free sites, upgrade your plan to install plugins.
In this guide
Have a question?
Ask our Support AssistantThis video walks through solving problems caused by plugins and themes on your WordPress.com site.
Plugin and theme errors happen when code added to your site conflicts with WordPress, with another plugin, or with your theme. Plugins and third-party themes are built by individuals and companies across the WordPress community, so any of them can develop a fault, most often after an update.
These errors fall into three groups, and each group has a different first step.
Your site is offline. You may see one of the following:
- “There has been a critical error on this website. Please check your site admin email inbox for instructions.”
- A blank white page, sometimes called the “White Screen of Death”.
- Memory exhaustion errors.
- ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS.
- A 500, 502, 503, or 504 error.
Start with Get your site back online.
Your site loads, but something looks or behaves wrong. You may see one of the following:
- Your layout, spacing, or fonts look different from before.
- Buttons, forms, or menus stop responding.
- Styles or images fail to load.
- A change you published is visible to you but not to logged-out visitors.
Start with Fix layout and display problems.
Your site works, but one feature stops working as expected. You may see one of the following:
- Your site loads more slowly than before. See how to remove unnecessary plugins.
- Your SEO titles or descriptions are missing or different from what you set. See how to check whether a plugin or theme controls your SEO settings.
- Order confirmations or other emails sent by a plugin stop arriving. See how to check for plugin conflicts affecting your emails.
If a plugin activates without errors but its features don’t appear, see our tips for using plugins.
Deactivating the plugin or theme responsible brings your site back online. Deactivating a plugin turns it off without deleting it, so its settings and content return when you reactivate it. If you cannot deactivate the plugin or change the site’s theme using the normal method, try the following methods in the order shown. None of them require you to reach WP Admin, so they work when an error has taken your site’s dashboard down.
The critical error screen names the plugin or theme responsible and includes a button to deactivate it. You don’t need to log in to your site’s dashboard to use it.
To deactivate a plugin or theme from the critical error screen, follow these steps:
- Visit your site. The critical error screen appears automatically when a plugin or theme causes the error.
- Read the name of the plugin or theme shown on the screen.
- Click the Deactivate button next to that plugin or theme.
- Visit your site again to confirm the error is resolved.
Visitors who are not logged in to your site see a generic “This site is temporarily unavailable” message. No plugin or theme details are visible to the public.
Once your site is back online, contact the plugin or theme developer to report the issue. If errors continue after deactivation, find the plugin or theme causing the problem.
Your Hosting Dashboard manages plugins through WordPress.com rather than through your site’s WP Admin screens, so you can deactivate a plugin there when WP Admin won’t load.
To deactivate a plugin from your Hosting Dashboard, follow these steps:
- Visit your Hosting Dashboard.
- In the left sidebar, select Plugins → Manage plugins.
- Click the name of the plugin you want to deactivate. Its details appear on the right, listing every site the plugin is installed on. If you don’t know which plugin is the cause, try deactivating each plugin one at a time.
- Find the affected site in that list and switch off the button in the Active column.
- Visit your site to confirm the error is resolved.
To deactivate the same plugin on several sites at once, see Manage plugins in bulk.
If your site is missing from your Hosting Dashboard, or its screens load blank, the Jetpack connection needs repair. WordPress.com manages your site through the Jetpack plugin, and Jetpack can disconnect when a plugin or theme causes a critical error.
Your site and its content are still there. Follow our guide to resolve Jetpack errors, then return to the methods above.
This section of the guide applies to sites with the WordPress.com Business and Commerce plan. If you have a Business plan, make sure to activate it. For free sites and sites on the Personal and Premium plans, upgrade your plan to access this feature.
Restoring a backup returns your whole site to the state it was in before the error, including the plugin and theme versions active at that time. Sites with eligible plans are backed up daily.
Restoring is the fastest option when several things broke at once, or when you don’t know which change caused the problem. Follow our guide to restore your website from a backup.
We can deactivate a plugin or theme on your behalf. Tell us your site address and the name of the plugin or theme, or describe the error you’re seeing if you don’t yet know which one is responsible.
Contact our Happiness Engineers to get started.
Clear your site’s cache first when your site loads but looks wrong. WordPress.com serves saved copies of your pages to visitors, so a change made by a plugin or theme update can take a moment to reach everyone.
Follow our guide to clear your site’s cache, then load the page again in a private browser window to see it as a logged-out visitor does.
If the problem is still there, find the plugin or theme causing it.
Identify the plugin or theme responsible so you can report it to its developer and keep the rest of your site running. Work through the following methods:
Switching to a default theme tells you whether your theme or a plugin is responsible. Follow these steps:
- Visit your site’s dashboard.
- Navigate to Appearance → Theme Showcase (or Appearance → Themes if your site uses the Default style).
- Note your site’s current theme, which is first in the list with the Active label.
- Search for Twenty Twenty-Four or Twenty Twenty-Five, click the theme’s thumbnail, and click the Activate button.
- Check whether the problem is still there.
If the problem goes away, your theme is involved. Your plugins were active during that test, so the cause is either your theme by itself or your theme combined with a plugin.
To tell those apart, reactivate your own theme and deactivate your plugins, then check your site again. If the problem is gone, your theme and one of your plugins are conflicting, and our guide to finding and fixing a plugin or theme conflict shows you which plugin is involved. If the problem remains with every plugin off, your theme is the cause: change your theme, or contact the theme’s author and ask them to resolve it.
If the problem remains, reactivate your previous theme and move on to your plugins.
Deactivating your plugins one at a time narrows the problem down to a single plugin while keeping the rest of your site working.
To find the plugin causing the problem, follow these steps:
- Visit your site’s dashboard.
- Navigate to Plugins → Installed Plugins.
- Start with the plugin you most recently installed or updated, and deactivate that plugin.
- Check whether the problem is still there.
- If the problem remains, reactivate that plugin and repeat steps 3 and 4 with the next plugin in the list.
- When the problem disappears, the plugin you have just deactivated is part of the cause.
Akismet and Jetpack are managed for you and can be left active throughout.
Confirm whether that plugin is the only cause by activating it on its own, with your other plugins deactivated. If the problem appears, that plugin is the cause on its own. Leave it deactivated and contact the plugin’s developer to resolve the issue.
If your site works with that plugin active on its own, two of your plugins are conflicting with each other. Deactivating either one resolves the problem, so keep the plugin that is better maintained and replace the other. Our guide to finding and fixing a plugin or theme conflict covers how to confirm the pair and what to send both developers.
This section of the guide applies to plugin-enabled sites with our WordPress.com Personal, Premium, Business, and Commerce plans. If your site has one of these plans, make sure to activate it. For sites on the free plan, upgrade your plan to access this feature.
Eligible plans have access to error logs that identify the plugin or theme that triggered a critical error, making them the quickest way to identify the cause.
For example, if you see “There has been a critical error on this website. Please check your site admin email inbox for instructions” and no email arrives, the PHP logs record the fatal error behind it.
Follow our guide to identify the source of a critical error.
This section of the guide applies to sites with the WordPress.com Business and Commerce plan. If you have a Business plan, make sure to activate it. For free sites and sites on the Personal and Premium plans, upgrade your plan to access this feature.
A staging site is a copy of your live site where you can deactivate plugins and switch themes without visitors seeing the changes.
On eligible plans, you can follow the steps to create a staging site to troubleshoot errors. On a staging site, you can deactivate every plugin at once and reactivate them one by one, which is the fastest way to narrow the problem down.
A few habits keep plugin and theme errors rare:
- Test changes on a staging site before applying them to your live site.
- Check whether your plan already covers what you need. The Jetpack plugin handles your site’s security, backups, and performance, and there are more built-in features you may not need a plugin for.
- Choose plugins that are used on many sites and have positive reviews. See our advice on how to select safe and trustworthy plugins.
- Keep your plugins and themes up to date. Updates carry bug fixes and performance improvements, so we recommend using plugins that have been updated within the past six months.
