How to Fix ‘The Site Is Experiencing Technical Difficulties’ in WordPress

How to Fix ‘The Site Is Experiencing Technical Difficulties’ in WordPress

When this error message is shown ‘The site is experiencing technical difficulties on your WordPress website. It means that there is some serious problem with the PHP code on your website.

What Is the Technical Difficulties Error in WordPress?

WordPress website is created using the PHP programming language. Any problem with that code can affect your website.

In old times, a fatal PHP error would result in the White Screen of Death. To help with this problem a helpful feature introduced in WordPress 5.2 has improved error protection, therefore, now an error message is shown instead of a blank screen: “The site is experiencing technical difficulties”.

The site is experiencing technical difficulties

When you try to log in to your site, then a slightly different message is seen: “The site is experiencing technical difficulties. Please check your site admin email inbox for instructions.”

Please check your site admin email inbox for instructions

Or you may see this error message instead: ‘There has been a critical error on this website.’

PHP is used in the WordPress core, themes, and plugins, therefore there might Let’s see how to fix ’The site is experiencing technical difficulties’ in WordPress. We’ll be covering two methods, and the first is the simplest, as long as you received an email about the error.

Method 1: Fixing Technical Difficulties Error Using Recovery Mode

The technical difficulties error message is not quite the solution. WordPress sends an email that consists of all the details about the reasons for the error to your website’s admin email address.

If you are on Bluehost or using a WordPress auto-installer, then your admin email address will be similar to the same address that you are using for your WordPress hosting account.

Many WordPress sites face problems while sending emails, so if you have not received the email, then you can opt for Method 2 to fix the error.

In your inbox, you will see an email having the subject line ‘Your Site is Experiencing a Technical Issue’. It will consist of helpful information about what is the cause of the error on your website.

See the below screenshot that consists of the email explaining that the error was caused by the Porto theme. It also consists of a special link that allows you to log in to your site in recovery mode to investigate and fix the problem.

Fixing technical difficulties using recovery mode

Now, click on the link to WordPress recovery mode, which takes you to your WordPress admin area.

You will be asked to log in to WordPress.

Once you are logged in, you will see a notification describing that you are in recovery mode. A link will be given to where you can go to fix the problem.

In the below screenshot, the message is displayed that one or more plugins failed to load properly and gives a link to the plugins page.

goto the plugin screen

Click on the link, you will see the misbehaving plugin. The exact line of code is seen that caused the error.

Move on and deactivate the plugin for now.

recovery-mode-plugins

Next, you can look for an alternative WordPress plugin, or ask for support from the plugin developers. Do share the description of the error with them.

If there is an issue with your theme, you will see a link to the themes page. At the bottom of the page, the theme causing the issue is seen.

To resolve the issue, change your WordPress theme, or delete the broken theme and reinstall a fresh copy of the same theme from the official source.

Once you know the issue, click on the Exit Recovery Mode button at the top.

Method 2: Fixing Technical Difficulties Error Manually

If have not received the WordPress notification email about the technical difficulties error, then this is how to troubleshoot and fix the technical difficulties error in WordPress.

If the error was caused by a recent action, then you can undo that action to fix the issue.

Like, if you installed a new plugin and have activated it caused the technical difficulty, then you need to deactivate that plugin.

If you are not sure, then you can simply follow these steps.

Step 1: Deactivate All WordPress Plugins

The technical difficulties error may be due to the faulty or conflicting plugin. The easiest way to remove the problem is to disable the plugin.

However, you are facing two problems. If you do not have access to the WordPress admin area, and you don’t know, which plugin to deactivate. In this case, you have to deactivate all WordPress plugins. You can activate them again once you have got access to your WordPress admin area.

Connect to your WordPress website with the help of an FTP client or the file manager app in your WordPress hosting control panel. Once connected, navigate to the /wp-content/

Within the wp-content folder, a folder called plugins is seen. Right-click this folder then chooses ‘Rename’ from the menu. Change the name of the plugins folder to anything that you like.

Once this is done, all of your plugins are deactivated, and visit your website to see if the technical difficulties message has disappeared.

If the error message is still shown on your site, then the reason may not be a plugin. Rename the folder back to plugins and go to the next step below.

However, if the error message is no longer displayed, then you will have to find What was the source of the problem. Rename the folder back to plugins.

Login to your WordPress admin area and move to the Plugins » Installed Plugins page. Reactivate the plugins one by one so you can know, which one caused the error.

Delete that plugin from your site using FTP or ask the plugin author for support.

Step 2: Switch to Default Theme

If the problem was not due to the plugin, then check if your theme is causing the error. To do so, replace your current theme with a default theme.

Firstly, connect to your website using an FTP client and go to the /wp-content/themes/ folder. It consists of all installed themes on your website.

Next, right-click your current WordPress theme and download it to your computer as a backup.

mynewtheme

After that, delete your current theme from your website. Right-click your theme folder and select ‘Delete’.

Your FTP client now deletes the theme from your website.

If you are using the default WordPress theme like Twenty TwentyTwo installed on your website, then WordPress automatically starts using it as the default theme. However, if you don’t have a default theme installed, then manually install it using FTP.

If the technical difficulties error is no longer shown, while visiting your site, then your theme is the reason for the issue.

Another way to fix the error is to see at your theme’s functions.php file. If there are extra spaces at the bottom of the file, then remove them. Sometimes this also works. Otherwise, consider reinstalling a fresh copy of your theme.

Step 3: Reinstall WordPress

If your website is not facing technical difficulties because of a faulty plugin or theme, then the problem may be a corrupt WordPress core file or there may be malware on your site.

Go to WordPress.org and download a fresh copy of WordPress on your computer. After the file is downloaded, unzip it to your computer. This creates a folder called WordPress consisting of all the files, you need for the reinstall.

Reinstall wordpress

Next, you need to connect to your WordPress site using an FTP client or the file manager app in your hosting control panel.

Once connected, you need to navigate the right pane to the root folder of your website. The root folder is the one that contains the wp-admin, wp-content, wp-includes, and wp-admin folders.

upload wordpress using filezilla

Now navigate the left pane to the fresh WordPress folder you just created. You need to select the files inside this folder and upload them to your website.

Your FTP client will ask if you want to overwrite these files or skip them. You need to select ‘Overwrite’ and check the box next to the ‘Always use this action’ option.

Now you can click on the OK button to continue. Your FTP client will replace all your core WordPress files with fresh copies from your computer.

Once finished, you can try visiting your website to see if this resolved the error.

If the technical difficulty was caused by a corrupt WordPress core file or malware, then the error message should no longer appear.

Step 4: Contact Your Hosting Provider

If you’ve tried all the steps above and are still seeing the ‘The site is experiencing technical difficulties’ message, then you can ask for help.

You should contact your WordPress hosting provider to see if there is anything they can do. Many providers offer excellent technical support and may be able to solve your problem.

For example, they may be able to check the server error logs or restore a backup of your WordPress site. They will let you know how they can help and what you should do next.

For the best results, make sure you check our guide on how to properly ask for WordPress support and get it.

We hope this tutorial helped you learn how to fix ‘The site is experiencing technical difficulties’ in WordPress. You may also want to learn how to speed up WordPress performance or see our ultimate WordPress SEO guide to improve your SEO rankings.