Do you have an error on your WordPress website? Check out this video by Kori Ashton from WebTegrity on how to fix warning errors.
Full Video Transcript
Hey y’all, welcome to another WordPress Wednesday.
We’re gonna look at errors that happen on your website. So, if you’ve ever gone to your website and maybe you’ve activated new plugins or you ran an update and all of a sudden a break like this happens.
We call this “The White Screen of Death.”
Sometimes, it’s completely white. Other times it will give you a quick reading out here and tell you “Warning: Cannot modify header.” or it’ll say something along the lines of exactly which plugin is causing the problem.
So, even though this looks like code up here and it might not make sense to you, take a moment and read through it.
So, we’re gonna read this.
By the way, this was sent into us from Kenny. Thanks so much for sending us this error. I’m gonna show you how to fix it.
This says, “Warning: Cannot modify header information. Headers already sent by” and it tells us where it’s being sent by and then, it says “and this is located in” and then, it actually gives you the path on your server where this file lives “inside of pluggable.php” and it tells you the exact line where this error is occurring.
Now, you might say to yourself, “But, I don’t write code. I didn’t do anything. I don’t know why this is happening.”
This particular error looks like it’s coming from your theme; because, it says that you have modified your header. Your header is typically affected by your theme. So, you might have done a theme update. You might have actually gone and put in a plugin that has now affected your theme’s header.
So, here’s the quick fix. I want you to go into your dashboard and go to your plugins area. In that area, I want you to deactivate every single one of them.
Realize, right now, that if you’re doing this on a live site, you’re gonna have some errors happening. So, better practice is for you to have a staging site to do this on. GoDaddy offers a staging site. Our preferred server, WP Engine. They offer staging sites where you can tinker with with your website and not ever have it broken on the front as users are visiting your website.
The other thing you could do, right now, if your website isn’t broken completely to the point of you can install a “Coming Soon” plugin and allow that to be up, right now, while you’re making maintenance on the site. However, more than likely, with an error like this, you’re gonna struggle getting into your dashboard. So, you’ve got one of two ways to do it.
You can go into your dashboard and click deactivate on all of them. You don’t want to remove them. You just want to deactivate them and then, you should be able to come here to the front side of your website.
Click “Refresh” and your website should reappear. Things will look a little wonky; because, all of your plugins are down.
But, then, I want you to go back in your plugins…
Are you with me on this?
Go back into your dashboard area. Click “Activate” one by one. Click “Activate” then go to the front side of your website and click “Refresh”. See if it breaks or if it’s okay.
You’ll go through this process, each one of these plugins until you make this error happen again. Then, you know which plugin is the culprit. Then, you understand which plugin you should not be using or perhaps which plugin in you should reach out to the developers on and ask the developer of the plugin for help troubleshooting this error.
I hope that helps you.
If you have something, also, where you completely cannot get back into your dashboard, whatsoever. I have another video that I’ve done.
Let’s see if I can show it to you here.
We’ve got one here, “When Your WordPress Menu Freezes” and we’ve also got one here that talks specifically about regaining access when you have the white screen of death.
So, that one right there is a really great video to watch. It’s a five minute video and that one actually walks you through step-by-step going through your server. How you can drill down into your ftp access point and get into the files if you cannot get into your dashboard.
Little bit of trouble shooting; but, y’all got this. I know you do.
If you need help on it, please reach out to us. We offer support, as well, for WordPress websites, so you’re more than welcome to find us over at www.webtegrity.wpengine.com.
I hope you’re having a great one. We’ll see ya later.
Bye, y’all.
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