How to fix a broken WordPress Website ??

Your Home page won't load and you can't login to WP admin. You're stuck. And that's why you are here. Don't despair!

So, when you go to your WordPress website, you will probably see something like this ?? A message telling you "THERE HAS BEEN A CRITICAL ERROR".

No kidding! This sort of thing happens after you've installed an update. But occasionally when you install a new Plugin not compatible with your site, this can happen too. So, you click through on this link ??to learn more about debugging in WordPress and you get to SUPPORT page which is completely unhelpful. So, we are going to ignore SUPPORT page.

Next, you try to login into your WordPress Admin. And you get the same error message; except if you look closely it's not exactly the same error message.

If you look at the instructions, you will see it says "PLEASE CHECK YOUR SITE ADMIN EMAIL INBOX FOR INSTRUCTIONS. Hopefully, you have access to that inbox because that will make your life much easier.

Here's what's happening. Your website is in what they call SITE RECOVERY MODE ??. This is actually an improvement over the old days of WordPress.

In the bad old days when your WordPress Website died, you would see something looked like this ??. That's a blank white screen also known as the white screen of death. WordPress has mostly killed off the white screen of death. Instead we have this thing called WordPress Recovery Mode ??.

So, follow the Recovery Mode instructions and check the admin mailbox. In your mail box, there should be a message from your website.

Click the link to read the message. And this below ?? should be the message you would have received.

This message tells you what causes the fatal error or the Plugin that caused the issue. And the most important thing is the link in the message.

This link would allow you to login in recovery mode. That link essentially disables the problem Plugin long enough from being able to get into the back-end as an Admin user and take care of the issue.

Now, that link is only good for 24 hours. But if that 24-hour runs out, you can always trigger a new email by trying to get to your Admin Panel. And when you see the error message, if it's been more than 24 hours since the previous message was sent, WordPress will send another message ??.

In the message, you will see more detail about the configuration of your site. And then specific error messages at the bottom. So, these are things you can use to deal with your WordPress website problem, if the recovery mode link does not work. But Recovery Mode link always works.

So, as soon as you click that link (In the message), you should be taken to Login page ??.

Successful Login will take you to Recovery Mode Admin Dashboard ??.

And there it indicates the issue "One or more plugins failed to load properly". And the link "Go to the Plugin Screen" will take you to the following screen.

And there would be the problem Plugin highlighted in RED. And you would also get the specific error message related to what the problem is.

You also get couple options. Deactivate and Resume. Resume activates the Plugin again and the site will still be broken. And Deactivate will deactivate the Plugin and that would bring your site back. But obviously the Plugin (Which in this case WooCommerce), you got to deal with that problem somehow. But as long as the site is online, that's the main thing depending on what plugin brought your site down. And you may need to find alternate plugin.

When you're done with this, you can click on EXIT RECOVERY MODE. And everything would go back to normal. Now you're just back in the normal admin and can see all other plugins and manage your site the way you normally would. You can then go to Front-end and see your web page/website as it is back. That's actually one way to get out of Recovery Mode.

Now, you're probably wondering what email address that message gets sent to. And that's the site Administrator Address which you will find under GENERAL SETTINGS in WP Admin. So, you have to make sure that all of your websites have the right email address. This way, when something goes wrong, you will be able to get one of these recovery mode email messages and bring your website back.

SO, WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU DON'T HAVE ACCESS TO THE SITE'S ADMIN MAILBOX?

Well, you're going to have to resort to the old way of fixing a broken WordPress site. You will need to break out an FTP program or maybe use the cPanel File Manager. You need to get to the wpcontent/plugins folder on your web server.

And the brute force way to fix this is to rename the Plugins folder to anything else. We usually add Z to the end of the folder name. That will disable all of the plugins on your website and bring your site back to life.

NEED MORE HANDS-ON GUIDANCE OR EXCITED TO BUILD ONE SUCH WEBSITE

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