3 Easy Ways on How To Remove Fatal Error in WordPress

If your website stops operating due to a fatal error warning, relax, it’s not the end of the world. There are moments when WordPress users encounter errors during an update or installation of theme or plugin, or while adding a code.

It’s a simple problem that can easily be fixed by following a few simple steps. You don’t have to be tech-savvy just to correct such errors. 

What Causes Fatal Error

There are several things we need to determine what causes fatal errors in WordPress. Such errors will not happen if there is nothing triggering the issues. So here are some of the factors that may contribute to having fatal errors.

Bad Coding 

– A plugin that is poorly coded may cause issues regardless of the theme or plugins you are applying to WordPress.

Another Plugin Conflict 

– Plugins are not always compatible with another plugin especially if it provides similar functionality. In this case, you need to carefully choose plugins that will work simultaneously with the plugins you already installed. 

WordPress Conflict 

– Plugin codes may be incompatible with WordPress codes used in the core files. Plugin developers usually update plugins after an upgrade to WordPress ensuring compatibility with their plugin. However, this is not a practice for some plugin developers, this is why you must be cautious if you will install older plugins.

Conflicting with the Theme 

– These functions are usually placed in the theme’s functions.php file. The idea of extending a theme’s performance using functions is the same principle as adding components in a plugin. Such problems may occur if it is badly coded or if it has a conflict with another plugin that has the same functionality.

3 Ways To Fix Fatal Error In WordPress

Although the fatal error itself seems to be quite difficult to handle because it can take a whole site down, It is quite easy to fix.

Here are some sample scenarios that can cause fatal errors.

Themes

As mentioned earlier, theme functions may cause a conflict with some of the functionalities of other plugins installed. If this issue happens while you’re installing or upgrading a theme this is what you needed to do.

  • The first thing you have to do is either delete or rename the folder such as ‘yourtheme_old’ or ‘your theme’ from your server by logging in using FTP.
  • You can locate your themes’ folder by going to wp-content>themes and from there, you can rename or delete the themes that you were previously using.
  • This will bring your site to its former state and will also revert your site’s theme back to its default.

Plugins

If your site is still showing the error, locate the wp-content folder and have the plugin folder renamed to something else, such as“plugin1”, it will immediately disable all the plugins in your website.

If this resolves the error, change the folder name back to its original. It will let you see all the installed plugins on your website.

Enable plugins that were disabled one by one to see if there are any plugins causing the issue. In this way, you will be able to determine the bad plugin that is causing the problem in the first place.

.Htaccess File

If disabling and/or deleting the plugins and the themes did not fix the fatal error, the other thing you can try doing is to delete the .htaccess file. However, copy + paste the code to your notepad, making sure that you will be keeping a copy in case you will be needing it for later. 

If your site works again after the deletion of the .htaccess file, proceed to settings>permalink then save the settings once again without the changes. This will automatically create the .htaccess file with the basic WordPress rules.

Fatal Error: Maximum Execution Time Exceeded

Dealing with errors is not an easy thing especially when it comes to technical problems that need technical solutions. Although the word “technical” seems to be a big word, it is not that hard to decipher what to do with these technicalities. Just do a little internet browsing and you will find a solution to it.

Fatal Error: Maximum Execution Time Exceeded, What Is It?

There is a limit in time execution for scripts in WordPress and web hosting providers in order to avoid the abuse of web resources by any particular script.

Oftentimes, WordPress encounters blank pages on account of a fatal PHP error that displays common error messages during a theme update. It will show this message, “Fatal Error: Maximum Execution Time Exceeded” or other times, you will get a white screen. 

If you are updating a plugin or theme during the time your website has high traffic, you have to expect that the particular task you are doing will take a bit longer than usual. It is also more likely when the execution time exceeds the limit, you will be receiving this message alert. 

To make it simpler, if any tasks which take more than the allowed execution time by WordPress, expect that it will be automatically terminated indicating a Fatal Error Maximum Execution Time Exceeded message.

2 Ways To Fix Fatal Error: Maximum Execution Time Exceeded?

As mentioned, fixing errors is really not a difficult task. If ever your site stops working due to Fatal Error Maximum Execution Time Exceeded, don’t worry. 

  • Edit .htaccess file Manually

When this error pops up, the first thing you need to do is to connect with your FTP client. The .htaccess file can be found in the same folders as your wp-content/ and /wp-admin/ folders are placed.

Add the following line to your .htaccess file: php_value max_execution_time 300

This code allows you to change the maximum execution time. If you’re still getting the error, you can change the exceeded time limit further.

  • Plugin Use

If you want a much different approach, then you can try installing WP Maximum Execution Time Exceeded plugin. This plugin works amazingly in exceeding the limit of up to 300 seconds, which is 5 minutes.

These steps prove that it’s not that hard to address fatal errors that you encounter in WordPress. All you need to do is to backtrack the last changes you made and Google how you can solve your WP issues.

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