If your WordPress website ever fails to load with the message of “There has been a critical error on this website“, this is likely due to a plugin update or change to your code somewhere which has caused your website not to load. The error may appear as:

You may also receive an error message via email, if you’re the WordPress administrator user.

The instructions below will help step you through the process to diagnose and mitigate the issue.

Instructions

1. Login into Plesk via the Conetix Control Panel.
2. Navigate to the Dashboard tab under the site in question, then click on Logs.

3. Above the “Type” column, click the drop-down arrow and untick “access” to only filter by log entries that may relate to the issue.

4. Generally the error will be a “Fatal” one, so look for any log entries that mention this – sometimes the “Fatal” part will only be part-way into the entry like the below example;

5. In this particular example, the error message is stating the name of the file it tried to first open, but could not find;

6. As such, the issue in this example case is that there is a missing “forms.php” file within a plugin called “google-captcha”.
   If the plugin name shown in your error message is not familiar, you may need to Google Search or look into the files of the plugin, to confirm the actual name of the plugin.
    
7. The next steps will depend on the nature of your error or issue, however in cases like this where a certain Plugin or Theme are the cause, you can use the WP Toolkit within Plesk to disable the troublesome item in order to regain access to the website.

8. For this example, we navigate to the Plugins tab under your WordPress installation, then click the “Active” switch next to the troublesome plugin in question in order to disable it;

9. You may then test loading your website as per normal, to confirm if the Critical Error is now gone.

10. You may now need to either refer to your website developer to have them assist in fixing the root cause of the issue, or if you yourself are a web developer you may wish to look at reinstalling, updating, or replacing the source of the root cause, since you should now be able to log into the WordPress admin panel again.

Should you be unable to identify or resolve the issue yourself, Conetix customers may contact our support team for further assistance.

The Events Calendar (and The Events Calendar Pro) are popular WordPress plugins to provide event and calendar information within your WordPress website.

However, this can add hundreds to thousands of extra pages to your website. Bots and crawlers (eg, Google) will then all index these extra pages and contribute to increased server load or even cause your website to stop responding.

Further to this, the more events which are added then the larger the problem gets. To mitigate this, you can simply block bots from crawling all of the additional pages (while still covering the key pages).

Instructions

1. Always ensure your plugins are up-to-date. If you haven’t updated to the latest available version, this should be the first step. The plugin developer is working on better fixes for some of these issues so ensuring you have the latest version (including the paid version if applicable) is the best possible fix.
   
2. If updates haven’t resolved the issue, the next step is to ensure that your robots.txt requests the bots and crawlers not to crawl parts of your website. You can add the following to your robots.txt to request the pages not be crawled:
   ## For Events Calendar
Disallow: *post_type=tribe_events*
Disallow: *hide_subsequent_recurrences=*
Disallow: *tribe-bar-date=*
Disallow: *tribe-venue=*
Disallow: *eventDisplay=*
Disallow: *eventDate=*
Disallow: *paged=*
Disallow: *pagename=*
Disallow: *shortcode=*
Disallow: *ical=*
Disallow: *outlook-ical=*
Disallow: *related_series=*
Disallow: *tribe_geofence=*
Disallow: *tribe_organizer=*
   
   If you’re using an SEO plugin such as Yoast of RankMath, you may need to add these into the plugin rather than directly into the file.
   
3. However, the robots.txt file is only a suggestion and does not explicitly block bots from accessing these pages. Bots which don’t follow standards or simply choose to ignore them may crawl anyway and still cause issues. We can block these by adding the following to your .htaccess file:
   # Block bots and crawlers to unnecessary event components
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (Bot|Crawler|Spider) [NC]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (ical|tribe-bar-date|tribe_events|eventDisplay) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
   
4. If any of the above is unclear or you’re unsure on how to implement, you may wish to talk to your developer to see if they can assist. Conetix customers on Managed WordPress plans can have these mitigations automatically added.

Further Reading

With WooCommerce being one of the most popular eCommerce systems used, it comes with a lot of power and a lot of flexibility. However, as it’s not a lightweight addon for WordPress, it can consume increased resources and cause your site to slow down if not managed well.

We recommend using a page cache (such as W3 Total Cache) to ensure users browsing your site have the fastest experience possible. However, pages with dynamic URL’s (eg, ?name=value) will bypass this cache as it’s expected the content should vary and therefore not be cached.

WooCommerce has a number of dynamic URL’s which can be used by plugins and themes for functions such as adding a product to the shopping cart (eg?add-to-cart=1234) to rapidly allow for product purchasing. Even though this is normally set with a rel=nofollow to tell bots and crawlers not to load the link, most of these bots still ignore this.

This can mean thousands of uncacheable URL’s for your website being crawled each day and potentially causing your website to be slow for normal customers or simply not accessible at all.

To fix this, you can take the following two steps:

1. Disallow via robots.txt

The first step is to explicitly tell the bots not to crawl URL’s with the add-to-cart in it. We can do this by adding the following line into your robots.txt file:

Disallow: *?add-to-cart=*

If you’re using an SEO plugin such as Yoast, Rank Math or similar then they will have an area to add this line in. Here’s a link for how to do it:

• How to edit robots.txt in Yoast
• How to edit robots.txt in Rank Math

2. Block via .htaccess

Because not all bots actually use the instructions in the robots.txt, it may be necessary to explicitly block these bots at at web server level. You can add the following to your .htaccess file to block:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (Bot|Crawler|Spider) [NC]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} add-to-cart [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]

This will return a 403 to any request from a bot or crawler (eg, Googlebot) and not cause any impact on the performance of your website. Because these URL’s aren’t helpful to be indexed, it won’t have any impact on your SEO either.

If you’re still not sure what to do, please feel free to contact the Conetix support team and we can review your site (if hosted with us) on your behalf to recommend changes.

A common issue many run into when updating certain aspects of their website is the changes not displaying. Where there’s static media involved, this is a common issue as these items are explicitly cached by web browsers and the changes may not display as you expect. Examples of the files affected (but not limited to) are:

• Images (jpeg, png, gif and similar)
• Stylesheets (css files)
• JavaScript files
• Fonts
• PDF’s

If you’ve replaced a file with the same name, your web browser won’t request a new version of the file and instead use a copy it has locally. This is to make sites load faster, rather than loading the same thing over and over.

You can test that the browser cache is the reason by opening your site in a different browser (which you haven’t used for the site before) or by using an incognito window (which bypasses the existing cache). If you see the changes, it means the browser is caching the information.

Of course, if you make a change and want this to display, it means you need to use a cache busting method to force it to display.

Cache Busting

Simple Static Website

If your website using using a Content Management System (CMS) such as WordPress and is instead flat HTML. The simple fix here is to simply use a different filename. For example, if you make a change to your stylesheet then instead of using styles.css (for example) as the name, update the name to stylesv2.css. You could also add an optional GET variable to the end, eg:

<link rel='stylesheet' href="/media/styles.css?version=29SEP22v1" type='text/css' />

By simply editing the existing styles.css and then updating the variable (eg, you could change to 29SEP22v2) you’re still loading the same file but the browser will treat it as differently and reload it.

WordPress

Stylesheet changes

All properly coded themes with modern themes and page builders should properly do this for you. However, if you have a hand code theme which needs some updating, you’ll need to ensure it’s using proper functions such as wp_enqueue_style. One simple trick for this is to use the timestamp of the file (which updates when you edit it) as the versioning for wp_enqueue_style which will automatically update anytime you edit the file. For example:

// Version CSS file in a theme
wp_enqueue_style(
	'theme-styles',
	get_stylesheet_directory_uri() . '/style.css',
	array(),
	filemtime( get_stylesheet_directory() . '/style.css' )
);

Source: https://kellenmace.com/force-css-changes-to-go-live-immediately/

Media

If you use the Media Library, this is automatically taken care of for you. However, if you manually replace a file using the Plesk File Manager or FTP, you will run into issues. The solution of course is to always use the WordPress Media Library. If you’ve mistakenly replaced a file and it’s not displaying, we recommend uploading a copy to the media library and then updating content to reference the new image or file.

We get asked all the time what is your secret sauce when it comes to your managed WordPress solutions, we are very open with many aspects of our solution including some of the WordPress plugins we use as default on all our WordPress installs. 

We believe that these provide the best of breed for their task which includes simplicity, functionality and value for money which in many cases is free.

We always recommend using the following plugins to use on your own installations of WordPress regardless of where they are hosted, they will provide you with not only optimal performance but 

Recommended Plugins

• Stream. This enables full audit logs of your site, which allows full tracking of your site and all actions.
  
• Stream-to-Conetix-Logs. This custom Conetix plugin utilises the Stream data to forward through to our centralised logging platform. The log data is then processed and will generate external actions such as automated testing.
  
• UpdraftPlus – Backup/Restore. In order to provide automated backups before changes are made and to provide 12 months worth of backups, we use the Premium version of UpdraftPlus.
  
• W3 Total Cache. In order to ensure your site is as fast as possible, we use W3TC as a high speed caching system. This integrates seamlessly with your WordPress instance.
  
• ConetixManageWP or MainWP Child. This is our main management plugin. It allows us to remotely monitor and update your website from a centralised system.
  
• WordFence Security.  Wordfence includes an endpoint firewall and malware scanner that were built from the ground up to protect WordPress. Our Threat Defence Feed arms Wordfence with the newest firewall rules, malware signatures and malicious IP addresses it needs to keep your website safe. Rounded out by 2FA and a suite of additional features, Wordfence is the most comprehensive WordPress security solution available
  

This support article will describe how to update Installed WordPress Themes via Plesk WP Toolkit.

Instructions

1. Login into Plesk via the Conetix Control Panel:
2. Once in Plesk access the WP Toolkit by Clicking on WordPress on the left-hand side of the screen:
   
3. Next click on the down arrow to manage your WordPress site.
   
4. Scroll down and click on updates.
   
   
5. Tick the top checkbox to select all available Theme updates, then Update.
   
6. Once completed, check Website to confirm no post update issues.

Jetpack is a WordPress plugin which contains a number of features such as backups, anti-spam, security, monitoring and more. Some of these features are available for free while others require a Jetpack subscription in order to use.

This article will take you through the process of installing and enabling the basics of the plugin.

Instructions

1. Login to your WordPress website as an administrator user.
2. Go to Plugins, then select Add New:
   
3. Search for Jetpack and install the plugin:
   
4. Activate the plugin, then select Set up Jetpack:
   
5. This will give you two options:
   1. Login to WordPress.com with a full Jetpack account (required for paid features and other options)
   2. Continue without signing in
6. If you have linked your account and simply want to get started, you can scroll down to find the Jetpack Free option:
   
7. The setup wizard will ask a number of questions and present options based on your website type and suggest options. You can select “Not Now” for all of these if you choose.
8. You can now use the enabled Jetpack features via the Jetpack dashboard:
   

This article demonstrates how to use the WP Toolkit to deactivate a plugin installed on a WordPress site. If you cannot access the WordPress backend you can use the WP Toolkit to deactivate a plugin. Disabling a plugin will stop any content or service the plugin provides from loading but will not remove the plugin from your website.

If you want to remove a plugin using the WP Toolkit we have the following Article:
Removing a plugin from WordPress using WP Toolkit

Instructions

1. Login into Plesk via the Conetix Control Panel.
2. Click on WordPress on the left-hand side:
   
3. This Menu will list any WordPress site that the WP Toolkit has found.
   If you don’t see the desired site click the Scan option at the top.
   
4. Click the Arrow to Expand the site if needed:
   
5. Click Plugins, and look for the plugin you want to deactivate:
   
6. Click the slider and wait for it to finish loading:
   

Once the slider has finished loading you have successfully deactivated a plugin using the WP Toolkit.

A critical security vulnerability has been identified in WooCommerce and the WooCommerce Blocks plugin, necessitating an emergency update. This update needs to be applied immediately to keep your site safe.

Managed WordPress Customers

Conetix will install the update on your behalf. This is being rolled out at present and we expect all sites to be patched and fully protected very shortly.

Update: All managed clients have been patched.

If you login to your WordPress instance and you’re running WooCommerce 5.5.1, 5.4.2, 5.3.1 or 5.2.3 then your system has been patched.

Standard Hosting Customers and Virtual Private Server Customers

For all plans where Conetix doesn’t manage the WordPress updates on your behalf, you or your developer will need to perform the update yourself.

We highly recommend ensuring you take a backup before running the update.

Frequently Asked Questions

This article will guide you through the process of disabling or deleting WordPress comments. When enabled, comments on a WordPress site can lead to malicious users creating comments to spam you or other websites.

If your website does not need comments enabled you should disable them.

Instructions

Disabling Comments in WordPress

1. Log into your WordPress website.
2. On the left go to Settings then Discussion
   
3. Now, under Default post settings you want to disable Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks) on new posts and Allow people to submit comments on new posts
   
4. These settings will only apply to new posts and they can be set per post as well.
5. If you are making these changes to an existing site you will also want to enable to option for Users must be registered and logged in to comment
   

Disabling Comments via a WordPress Plugin

1. Log into your WordPress website.
2. Go to Plugins, Add New:
   
3. In the right-hand search bar, search for “Disable Comments“. You should then find the Disable Comments plugin by WPDeveloper:
   
4. Click Install Now, then Activate.
5. After it’s been activated, it should take you back to the plugins page. Within the Disable Comments plugin, select Settings:
   
6. For most business sites, simply select “Everywhere“:
   
   (Options exist to only block for specific post types if required as well)
7. Click “Save Changes“.

You have now successfully disabled comments on your WordPress website.

Deleting Comments via a WordPress Plugin

1. Within the Disable Comments plugin, select Settings:
   
2. Click on “Delete Comments“:
   
3. Then select “Everywhere“:
   
4. Click “Delete Comments” at the bottom of the page:
   
5. Confirm you would like to proceed in deleting comments and select “Yes, Delete It”:
   
   
   

You have now successfully deleted comments from your WordPress website.