Hey everybody, welcome to another WordPress Wednesday.
My name is Kori Ashton, here at WebTegrity in San Antonio, Texas.
If I sound different and the place looks different, it's because we've actually made our move happen.
Manual labor is not my gig, y'all. I'm definitely a nerd and I need to be in front of the computer.
We are here today looking at how to trouble shoot your WordPress website.
Really this came from a YouTube subscriber that asked if they could have a little bit of their time.
We set up a call and I got to help them trouble shoot through their website.
It gave me some ideas realizing that I haven't ever really done a video, specifically on how to trouble shoot
if you're having some weird issues with your WordPress website...
Here's a quick punch list to figure out what's actually happening on your website.
First things first, you always want to be sure that you have a backup in place of your website.
So, you want to connect with your hosting company and see if they have that for you.
Then you want to ask them, if something goes wonky or weird while I'm trouble shooting,
how do I roll back my website?
Is there a fee involved?
You can use a plugin like Backup Buddy.
That's a pretty great plugin that you can use to plug into your website.
Be sure that you have a backup in place.
Updraft Plus is a another really great one that you can use, to be sure that you have a backup in place.
Look at those options, to be sure, in case anything goes more odd, that you can at least revert back to this
version as we're trouble shooting through some things.
That's the first thing.
Second thing is, you want to be sure that you're running everything completely up to date.
That could be causing your problem, right now.
You want to be sure that your core WordPress is completely up to date.
You scroll down on the bottom right hand corner and you can check to see if you're running the most recent
version.
Of course, on your dashboard, as well.
It's going to tell you if your running an outdated version here.
You'll probably see some updates that need to happen.
So, please, please, please have a backup in place
and second, be sure that everything on your website is completely up to date
That would be your core WordPress.
That would be your theme, itself.
You need to be sure that you're running the most recent version of your theme.
As well as all of your plugins need to be completely up to date.
Running through those things right away might actually fix whatever problems your running with
and you're off and running. Great job.
High five, right?
But, if those things are in fact in place and you're still struggling and you're saying
"Kori, I'm still seeing this glitch" or "I'm still seeing this conflict of code".
Here's what we can do...
First thing to trouble shoot is to check your documentation on your theme itself.
There's a lot of resources there.
There's also probably a forum that your theme author (especially if you purchased the theme)
there's probably a forum you can go to, ask some questions and get some
feedback there.
If you're waiting on that feedback and you want to do some tinkering around yourself,
the cool thing would be to have a staging environment of your website.
WP Engine is our hosting company. They allow you to have a one-click, where it basically
duplicates your whole website and gives you an opportunity to get in there and tinker around.
If you don't have that, though; please be sure that any tinkering around that you're doing could be
potentially affecting any visitors you might have on your website.
Okay, let's go into this.
The first thing you want to do is check to see if you have an extra theme sitting around, back here in your
themes area. Up here in "Themes".
All I'm going to ask you to do is simply switch themes for a second.
Again, if you have visitors, they're going to see this all take place.
But, if we want to trouble shoot, the first thing is to see if it's a theme conflict and the way to test that
is to change your theme.
I suggest you change it over to one that is created by WordPress themselves.
So, TwentySeventeen, TwentySixteen, TwentyFifteen.
One of those. So just activate that and go back to the front side of your website and, of course,
things are going to look totally different. I know they will; but, you can then trouble shoot to see
if that error that you're struggling with is still happening.
If it's fixed, then wahlah, you know it's a theme conflict.
You can talk to your theme author and figure that situation out.
Or if you can't get a solution, you're just simply going to have to change the theme.
If the error still exists, then we've at least checked off what it is not.
It is not a theme conflict.
Next what you can do, is you can go through your plugins.
You can come over here to plugins and one by one, you can deactivate the plugins.
Don't delete them, just simply deactivate them and check the error that you're seeing.
Even if you think, well this has nothing to do with that.
It doesn't matter, it could still be injecting some code into your website that's causing that conflict.
Take a look at that as you're here.
Go ahead and deactivate each plugin. Go over and test it, go over and test it.
Of course, you want to remember which plugins you did have active, so you might want to just jot that down
before you start deactivating everything, right.
That's one way to trouble shoot and see if maybe it's a plugin conflict.
If in fact it is, and you've figured it out, you're either going to have to connect with that plugins author
and ask if there is some sort of a workaround or choose a totally different plugin to make that
opportunity happen on your website.
Does that make sense?
Alright. So, those are some very quick troubleshooting things.
Of course, your hosting company should be available to kind of think through some ideas with you on
troubleshooting.
And of course, we are your nerds. Any time you need us, connect with us over on WebTegrity.com.
I'd love to help you out and we also brag about this company...I'm going to give them a shout out right now...
WP Fixit is areally great company that provides outstanding support.
So, their prices start at 39 U.S. dollars, so if y'all can budget for that...
We've heard nothing but just outstanding service from these guys.
WPfixit.com. Giving them a shout out.
Alright, I hope it's a great WordPress Wednesday for y'all. I didn't forget about you, I know this is
a late release in the day; but, it's been crazy around here.
If you're in the San Antonio area, please stop by our new office.
Come check us out. We're over in Shavano Park. I've got the address on our website.
I'll see y'all next WordPress Wednesday. Bye everyone.