Emergency · Site down
WordPress site down or throwing a critical error
White screen, 500 error, or "There has been a critical error on this website." Here's what each one usually means, what to try safely, and when to stop and call someone.
Fix My SiteWhat your error is actually telling you
White screen, no text
Usual cause: PHP fatal error with display suppressed.
Safe first move: enable WP_DEBUG_LOG and read the log — don't enable WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY on a live site.
"There has been a critical error on this website"
Usual cause: same thing, WordPress caught it.
Safe first move: check the admin email — WordPress sends a recovery-mode link.
500 Internal Server Error
Usual cause: server-level — .htaccess, memory limit, PHP version mismatch.
Safe first move: check host error logs before touching WordPress.
"Error establishing a database connection"
Usual cause: credentials, or the database server is down/over quota.
Safe first move: verify with your host first. This is rarely a WordPress problem.
Site loads, admin doesn't
Usual cause: plugin conflict in admin context, or a corrupted .htaccess.
Safe first move: try the recovery mode link.
Redirect loop
Usual cause: site URL / home URL mismatch, or an SSL setting fighting a plugin.
Safe first move: check wp_options for siteurl and home.
502 / 504 gateway timeout
Usual cause: something is running too long — often a cron pileup or a runaway query.
Safe first move: check for a bloated wp_options autoload.
Can updating WordPress break my site?
Yes — and understanding why tells you how worried to be.
Core updates rarely break sites on their own. WordPress core has an unusually strong backward-compatibility culture. What breaks sites is the interaction: a core or PHP version bump exposing a plugin that's been quietly using a deprecated function for two years, or two plugins that both patch the same hook.
The risk is almost entirely proportional to how far behind you are. A site updated weekly is boring to update. A site eleven versions behind is a genuine project — and the fix is usually not "update carefully," it's "update on a staging copy, one at a time, with a rollback."
That's the actual argument for maintenance, and it's a real one: not that updates are dangerous, but that batched updates are.
What to try before calling — and where to stop
Reasonable to try yourself
Read the host's error log. It usually names the file and the line.
Use the recovery-mode link WordPress emailed to your admin address.
Deactivate plugins via FTP or file manager by renaming the plugins folder — reversible, and it isolates the cause fast.
Switch to a default theme temporarily by renaming the theme folder.
Stop and call someone if
You're being asked to edit wp-config.php and you're not sure what you're looking at
The error mentions the database
You don't have a backup you've verified this year
It's a revenue site and you've been down more than an hour
You fixed it and it came back
That last one matters most. An error that returns isn't an error — it's a symptom.
Fix My SiteAfter the fire
Every emergency we handle ends with the same written question: what would have caught this early? Usually the answer is uptime monitoring, verified backups, and a staging environment — three things that cost less per month than one hour of emergency work.
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