WordPress websites are made up of various components such as the WordPress core, themes, and multiple plugins that add specific functionalities. Although plugins are extremely useful tools, their interaction can sometimes cause conflicts that affect your site’s performance and functionality.
Conflicts in WordPress can appear in many ways, from incompatibilities between two or more plugins, to discrepancies between a plugin and the active theme, or even issues caused by WordPress core updates that conflict with older versions of plugins or themes. Additionally, scripts or styles loaded by plugins may interfere with the proper functioning of the site.
Fortunately, there is an efficient way to identify and resolve these conflicts without affecting your visitors’ experience: the "Health Check & Troubleshooting" plugin. This plugin is developed and recommended by WordPress.org.
Diagnosing Conflicts with Health Check & Troubleshooting
The "Health Check & Troubleshooting" plugin provides a practical way to diagnose issues related to plugins, themes, or the WordPress core. Here’s how to use it:
In your WordPress dashboard, go to "Plugins" > "Add New".
Search for "Health Check & Troubleshooting" and click "Install Now", then "Activate".
Once activated, go to "Tools" > "Site Health".
Here you will see the "Site Health Status", which highlights critical information about your WordPress configuration. You can access the "Info" or "Tools" section for more details.
From here, you can review various aspects of your WordPress installation. We recommend checking "Plugin Compatibility", where the tool verifies whether your installed plugins are compatible with your current PHP version.
Next, we recommend enabling Troubleshooting Mode to practically test your WordPress installation. To do this, click on "Troubleshooting" in the top bar:
Read the instructions and click "Enable Troubleshooting Mode". In summary, this mode disables all plugins and switches to a default theme only for you, without affecting your site visitors.
Identifying the Conflicting Plugin or Theme
Try to reproduce the issue you were experiencing. If the problem does not occur in this controlled environment, it indicates there is a conflict with a plugin or theme.
While in troubleshooting mode, reactivate each plugin or theme one by one and check whether the issue reappears after each activation.
Once the conflicting plugin is identified, consider updating it, replacing it with an alternative, or contacting the developer to report the issue.
IMPORTANT: After completing your tests, exit troubleshooting mode to restore your site to its normal state. Go to the "Dashboard" in your WordPress admin panel:
Manual Diagnosis
In some cases, disabling plugins or themes may not resolve the issue. To identify specific problems, WordPress includes a useful feature known as Debug Mode, which displays PHP errors, warnings, and notices on screen when activated. This can help you identify and resolve specific issues related to themes or plugins.
To enable Debug Mode, you can follow this guide: How to activate WordPress Debug Mode, or follow these steps:
Access your site files: Use an FTP client or the webFTP service from our control panel to access your WordPress files.
Edit the wp-config.php file: This file is located in the root directory of your WordPress installation. Edit the file accordingly.
Enable Debug Mode: Look for the line
define('WP_DEBUG', false);. If it does not exist, you can add it. Change false to true so it reads define('WP_DEBUG', true);.Save the changes: Save the file and upload it back to the server if necessary.
With Debug Mode enabled, WordPress will display errors on screen, helping you identify issues related to themes or plugins.
Note: Remember to disable Debug Mode once you have finished diagnosing the issue to avoid displaying error messages to visitors. Simply change
true back to false in the wp-config.php file.You can also review your hosting error logs from our control panel. These logs may provide additional details about server process errors, plugin issues, database errors, and more.
Plugin and theme conflicts can be challenging, but with the right tools and approach, they can be efficiently identified and resolved.