Try manually resetting your plugins (no Dashboard access required). If that resolves the issue, reactivate each one individually until you find the cause.
If that does not resolve the issue, access your server via SFTP or FTP, or a file manager in your hosting account’s control panel (consult your hosting provider’s documentation for specifics on these), navigate to /wp-content/themes/ and rename the directory of your currently active theme. Hopefully, this will force the default theme to activate and rule out a theme-specific issue (theme functions can interfere like plugins).
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As for the email not arriving, it sounds like your hosting provider has disabled PHP’s mail() function, which WordPress uses to send you email notifications and is also used by contact form plugins and more.
This is a common safeguard employed by hosting providers when they suspect that another customer on the same server is sending spam emails directly from the server.
Another alternative is that PHP’s mail() function is still active, but spammer activity from the server has already caused any email sent from it to be blocklisted. This would result in the emails being sent but never received by any email address with basic anti-spam capabilities.
You can check this by leaving a comment on your site and checking if you receive an email. Another alternative would be to use the Health Check plugin and send yourself a test email from the plugin’s Tools tab to see if it works.
If you didn’t receive a test email, you could try using an SMTP plugin to configure your WordPress site to use your email’s outgoing mail server instead of PHP’s mail() function.
Thanks so much for the detailed reply. I was able to disable all my plugins and discovered that Jetpack was the culprit. What can I do to get Jetpack to work or, alternatively,, find a replacement plugin that does much the same?
I recommend contacting Jetpack’s support about this via https://jetpack.com/contact-support/?rel=support if you have a paid plan, or https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/jetpack/ if you do not.
Thanks again for your help. I have a new problem in uploading photos to a gallery in a post. Most images are working as normal with thumbnails appearing as requested. However, when I try to upload a picture which has been photoshopped (and saved as .jpg) the thumbnail is black. I am sure this didn’t use to happen. Any ideas?
In Photoshop, make sure that you use the Export for Web (or something close to that) option.
I tried using “Save for Web” (which I’ve never had to do before ) as both a .jpg and a .gif . I both cases it appears to load but is now totally white rather than the black I was getting before
