WordPress critical error: site down, white screen, 500 error

Your site shows "There has been a critical error on this website", a white screen of death, a 500 error, or you can no longer get into wp-admin? When a WordPress site is down, the cause is almost always a single one - an updated plugin, a PHP version change, memory running out - but it has to be found methodically, without making things worse. We handle it as a fixed-price job: diagnosis, a fix for the cause and a check that the site is properly back.

The most common error messages and what they mean

• "There has been a critical error on this website" → a fatal PHP error, usually in a plugin or the theme. Since WordPress 5.2 the site goes into protection and the administrator gets an email with a link to recovery mode.
• White screen of death → the same kind of error, but with error display switched off or on a WordPress version that never gets as far as showing the message. Memory running out ("Allowed memory size exhausted") is a frequent culprit.
• 500 error (Internal Server Error) → the server can't complete the request: a corrupt .htaccess file or one with unsupported rules, wrong permissions, a PHP error the hosting doesn't show.
• "Error establishing a database connection" → WordPress can't reach the database: changed credentials in wp-config.php, a database server that's down or overloaded, damaged tables.
• "Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance" → an update interrupted halfway left the .maintenance file in the site folder.
• wp-admin unreachable while the public site works → a plugin that only acts in the dashboard, a session issue or an http/https redirect loop.

What you can safely check yourself

First of all: if you have access to the hosting panel, back up the files and database before touching anything. Then, in order:

1. Look for the WordPress email in the administrator's inbox, spam folder included: the recovery mode link lets you into wp-admin with the faulty component paused, and from there you can deactivate it.
2. Think about what changed: a plugin, theme or WordPress update, a PHP version switch made by the hosting. Very often, that's where the cause is.
3. Deactivate the suspect plugin over FTP: renaming its folder in wp-content/plugins (for example from "plugin-name" to "plugin-name.off") switches it off without deleting anything. If you don't know which one it is, you can rename the whole plugins folder to test, then put it back as it was.
4. Read the actual error: in wp-config.php, setting WP_DEBUG and WP_DEBUG_LOG to true and WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY to false sends the error to wp-content/debug.log instead of your visitors' screens. Remember to set everything back to false and delete the log afterwards: on many hosts that file can be opened from a browser and contains paths and details about the site.

When to stop: if you find oddly named files, redirects to sites you don't recognise, admin users you didn't create or Google warnings that the site is compromised, you're not looking at a fault but at a possible infection, and tinkering risks wiping the traces. The same goes if the error is in the database or on the server: editing tables or configuration at random is the fastest way to turn downtime into data loss.

What we do

• Diagnosis: we read the PHP and web server logs and pinpoint the component or configuration causing the outage.
• Fixing the cause: we deactivate or roll back the incompatible plugin or theme, adjust the PHP version, raise the memory limit where the hosting allows it, restore a clean .htaccess, sort out the database connection.
• Quick malware check: we make sure the outage isn't the symptom of an infection. If it is, we stop and move on to WordPress malware removal.
• Final check: the public site, wp-admin and the main features (forms, cart, login) respond again, debug logging is switched off and we send you a written summary of what happened and what we did.

Price and conditions

The job has a fixed price of €89 and covers diagnosing and fixing a single cause on one site, during office hours: Monday to Friday, 09:00-18:00. The conditions for fixed prices are on the pricing page.

If the cause needs development - a custom plugin to correct, for example - or server work, we stop and give you a quote before going any further, hourly (€75/hour) or with hour packages. Out of hours, time-band rates apply, and pickup is only guaranteed with an active on-call plan; pickup times are on the response times page.

A typical case

A brochure site hits a critical error on Monday morning: over the weekend the hosting moved PHP to version 8, and a slider plugin that hadn't been updated in years uses functions that version no longer accepts. From the log we identify the plugin, deactivate it and the site is back online; we then check that the page where it was used holds up without it, and recommend a maintained alternative to install. One cause, one job, fixed price.

Who it's for

• Businesses and professionals with a WordPress site that's down and no technical contact to call.
• Agencies and web designers who handle content and design and need someone to get hands-on with PHP, logs and servers.
• Anyone whose current provider isn't answering, or whose hosting just says "the problem is in the site".

If the outage came from an update and you want to stop it happening again, there's the WordPress update service done on staging; to look after the site over time, there's WordPress support.

How we work

Tell us what you see - a screenshot of the error is enough - and give us access to the hosting or FTP. Before touching anything we take a copy of the files and database, then work on the cause and keep you posted. If we find the problem is bigger than a single cause, we tell you straight away with a quote, and you decide whether and how to go ahead. The access you give us is used only for this job, and at the end we recommend changing the passwords.