Irrespective of all your concern and carefulness towards your website, even a small complication in the plugins or themes can give you a devastating stroke, when your website will start behaving oddly. Not always plugins are to be blamed, sometimes it can be due to the fault of WordPress users too. Activities such as not updating plugins regularly, installing a large number of plugins, etc. cause lag and slow down the efficiency of the website.

Here are some of the most important factors which can help a user manage and protect the balance of his websites.

What causes plugin complications?

Although, no specific plugins have been defined as problematic, yet one can never say what can go wrong when. The plugin which is working perfectly now can behave abnormally, crashing down your website, at the next moment. So, it is important to know what causes these sudden changes in plugins’ behavior. Let’s find out!

WordPress experts have specified these issues under four categories, as stated below:

  • Bad Coding- A plugin which is badly coded can completely ruin your website, put a negative effect on the traffic, and create a confusing atmosphere for your users. Now, this is a thing which no company, business, or an individual blogger will ever want.
  • Conflicts with other Plugins- Not all plugins support the same language, nor are they written to serve a similar purpose. This may give rise to issues such as a new plugin installed recently interferes with the working of another plugin installed earlier, creating a big complication on any website.
  • Conflicts with WordPress Theme- Many instances have occurred where plugins have badly reacted with a particular WordPress theme one is using. This happens when a specific WordPress theme does not support a set of commands that has been used to create a plugin.
  • Issues with WordPress- Not every plugin in the market has been created in compliance with WordPress. Moreover, the variants and versions of WordPress also play an important role in deciding the working of a specific plugin.

What happens during complications?

When complications arise in a website due to plugin issues, normally one of these two conditions may arise:

  • Error Message Popup- In this condition, although the website remains live allowing users to come and visit the website, many error messages pop up on each page. This can lead to uncertainty and unsubscription from the users’ side.
  • White Screen of Death- As the term is self-explanatory, the white screen of death leaves your website and admin area as a completely blank page, which cannot be resolved using the admin account. Although, this occurrence can be very intimidating, with proper knowledge it can also be resolved.

How to rectify them?

  • Error Messages popup- For rectifying this issue, one first needs to understand and find out the main culprit which is causing the complication. This is because not always plugins are to be blamed, the issue may have occurred due to conflicts between WordPress themes and plugins. Sometimes, the problem may lie within WordPress itself. In such cases, the first thing to do is to deactivate all plugins and check the compatibility of the theme with WordPress. When no-fault appears, the plugins should be installed one-by-one to find out the problem-causing plugin.
  • White Screen of Death- In this case, one needs to deactivate all plugins first, before reinstalling and finding out the culprit plugin. However, as the live website and the admin area become completely blank, an user can either choose to rename the ‘plugins’ folder located at www.yourwebsite.com/wp-content/plugins, which deactivates all plugins and allows access to the admin area; or deactivate all plugins via the website base by visiting “wp_options” table and editing the value of the “active_plugins” to “a:o:{}”. If the problem still persists, the user will need to revert back to an unmodified version of WordPress and then deactivate and afterwards reactivate all plugins.

Conclusion

Although these issues can prove to have quite adverse effects on a website, one should always keep the backup of all plugins and website data to remain in the safer zone, during such instances.