• Since the update to WP 5.2 I can’t access the admin anymore. First, the whole website was blocked (The site is experiencing technical difficulties. also in the frontend) This I fixed by changing the php version to 7.1. So the frontend of the website could be accessed again.
    Backend showed an error (some kind of referrer to upgrade.php in the URL). By changing manually the DB version to the one mentioned in version.php, the referrer in the URL went away, but the “The site is experiencing technical difficulties.” still shows up when I enter faustaborsani.ch/wp-admin
    I did disable the plugins, but that didn’t help. I did disable the theme and that didn’t help either.
    What could I do?

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • Moderator t-p

    (@t-p)

    WordPress 5.2 introduced new protection from sites crashing due to bad code (also known as a White Screen of Death, or WSOD for short).

    If your site crashes, the technical difficulties message is shown, and an email is sent to the site admin with a way to log in and deactivate the plugin or theme causing problems, once that is done the site should start working again as expected.

    If you didn’t get the email, you can look for an error log on your server to see what the problem is. If you can’t find one, use DEBUG mode to log an error so you can fix it. https://wordpress.org/support/article/editing-wp-config-php/#wp_debug

    Meanwhile 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, navigate to /wp-content/themes/ and rename the directory of your currently active theme. This will force the default theme to activate and hopefully rule-out a theme-specific issue (theme functions can interfere like plugins).

    Thread Starter Hapewe

    (@hapewe)

    I had to activate the debug mode, which stated the “Fatal error: Cannot redeclare url_shorten() (previously declared in /home/www/xxx/yyy/wp-inlcudes/formatting.php:5770)in /home/www/xxx/yyy/wp-admin/includes/misc.php on line 228”
    A quick search gave me the advice to manually (by ftp) upload a fresh wp version (except the content folder).
    This did the trick. Website works again, backend can be reached again.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

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