WordPress is one of the worlds most popular content management system powering more than 42.9% of the world’s websites.
WordPress is easy to use content management system and you can get a website up and running in five minutes.
All this is true. However, once you get your website up and running, it requires maintenance and regular wordpress help as there are many things that would need updating, fixing, changing etc.
Here is a comprehensive list of frequent WordPress help requests we get from our customers.
WordPress Setup
1. Install WordPress
Request to install WordPress is the most basic WordPress help request that we get. Mostly WordPress newbies who find themselves lost or don’t have time to set up WordPress on their own ask us to install WordPress for them.
We install WordPress for them usually that includes a premium theme and plugins that save them money and time.
To learn more about what is WordPress click here.
Design Changes
2. Make Design Changes
CSS stands for cascading style sheet is a styling sheet which controls the visual appearance and formatting of your WordPress website. It’s a coding language through which we can make your website look exactly the way you want.
These WordPress help requests can be as simple as to just changing the font size, color and style on your website to completely renovating your website.
Maintenance
3. Regular Backups
Backs ups are as important for your website as insurance is for your car.
Backing up your website means that you are storing all of your website’s data safely (somewhere other than on your website). In case of breach of security or hacking, in which you end up losing access your website or lose your website entirely, you can recover all your data and restore your website instead of starting from scratch.
Two types of backups:
- Need Backup of the whole site
- Need Backup of Database
This is a maintenance task (done regularly on a weekly or monthly basis) however we often get a one-time backup help request as well.
4. Regular WordPress & Plugin Updates
WordPress team is continuously working to improve the software and release regular updates. You need to keep your website up to date at all times otherwise it will be vulnerable and can easily be hacked.
To avoid this security threat you can keep your website updated yourself or use a service like WP Minds to do the job for you.
WordPress is a software that has a lot of world-class developers behind it.
So every now and then they come up with an update, fixing bugs, improvements and even core updates that fill out security patches. In other words, updates are good for you and your website.
5. White Screen of Death
I was browsing or logging into my website and found the white screen if death. Can you fix it?
This occurs due to a problem in your PHP database/code or if your memory limit has been exhausted.
It is an easy fix once the cause of the problem is detected and we have access to everything.
6. Fix 404 Errors
To fix pages leading to 404 error is another popular WordPress help request that we get
404 error means that the page that you clicked on either has a broken link or has been removed or has been changed or is temporarily unavailable.
7. Sidebar Below the Content Error
The Side Bar is called the side as it is supposed to on the side, either left or right. And if somehow the sidebar moves from the side to below the text, this means that something somewhere went wrong.
Here is probably (most likely) to be an issue with HTML code OR CSS code. If not then its worth considering that a Plugin might be interfering with your theme or customization made on the previous version of the theme are not compatible with the new (updated) theme.
But not to worry. If you’re unable to fix this on your own. Send a WordPress help request.
8. Fix White Text and Missing Buttons in WordPress Visual Editor
If important buttons
This could be due to a small error (hopefully) because if not then this means that your WordPress is corrupted.
Whatever may be the reason that this error is occurring, it is fixable!
9. WordPress Memory Exhausted
The web server that is hosting your website gives certain space to your WordPress. Now if your website requires more space than allocated by your web server. This error occurs.
We know that WordPress is built in PHP. This error can be fixed by extended the designated memory in the PHP code.
10. Locked Out of WordPress Admin Dashboard
This request often leads to the discovery that your website has been hacked. Because if you are locked out of your admin area its either because you are making a typing error, putting in wrong credentials or that your login details have been changed (as in you have been hacked)
What to do when you are locked out of WordPress admin area The solution to this lies in resetting your password using phpMyAdmin.
11. Error Establishing a Database Connection
This would be stating the obvious, but this error occurs when your WordPress is unable to establish a connection with the database.
There could be multiple reasons behind this error varying from the database being corrupted to the web server having an issue.
It is difficult to put your finger on the cause of this error, fixing it is the next step.
12. Problem Uploading Images
WordPress has a few technical aspects that need to be kept in mind while uploading an image such as the image name and size.
However, often image upload error occurs due to HTTP error now this error may be due to a temporary bug or something more serious.
13. Upload: Failed to Write the File to Disk
WordPress help requests for this error generally come from WordPress Newbies. ‘ Upload: failed to write the file to disk’ this error is most typically caused due to incorrect file permission. Which means that you need access to your hosting account or resetting file permission via FTP or c Panel File Manager.
14. Maximum Execution Time Exceeded
We get this WordPress help requests from time to time. The reason that this happens is:
In PHP language(on which WordPress is built on) there is a limit assigned to how long a PHP script can run. This limit is set to prevent the miss use of the script.
So if you’re updating your website and the process took longer to complete than the allowed limit. It would stop.
15. WordPress Keeps Logging Out
This problem can be very annoying but luckily this is an easy fix. People can easily fix this on their own, but
This problem arises when there is a difference between the WordPress URL and the Site URL.
16. Syntax Error
A syntax error occurs when there is an error or mistake in your code’s syntax. These mistakes may be as small as a missing bracket or an extra comma yet these are significant enough to break your entire website.
Developers have no trouble fixing this problem since they are well familiar with the coding language and script.
17. Login Page Refreshing/Redirecting Issue
This error gives users mini heart attacks as it can trick them into believing that their website has been hacked(which could be true). But this is not the case here. There is generally an issue with one of the following which is causing this problem.
- Permalink structure
- Site URL
- .htaccess file
- Issues with plugin & theme file configuration
18. Are You Sure You Want to do This?
This is one of the mystery errors in WordPress since it gives it no indication as to what might be wrong. And when you don’t know what is wrong, how do you fix it?
The is a list of things that could be causing this issue. We often receive a ticket for fixing this problem.
19. Briefly Unavailable for Scheduled Maintenance Error
This is a common WordPress error since it is associated with updates. Now we know that WordPress, it’s themes and Plugins keep rolling out regular updates.
This error occurs when the has been a problem in completing the update. When you are updating a theme or a plugin, during this time they notify the visitors that this website is “briefly unavailable or is under maintenance”
Now, this often goes away on its own (which is great news) and if not then you might actually have a problem.
20. RSS feed Errors
RSS feed makes your content easy to index. WordPress provides RSS feed in an XML which is very strict markup language. Which in simple words means that even a single additional or missing tab can break it.
Poor formatting is what originates RSS feed errors. Half of WordPress users have no knowledge of coding which is why when every such error appears they seek help from developers and support teams like ours.
21. 403 Forbidden Error
403 Forbidden error occurs when your server does not have permission to access a certain page.
This error may appear while logging into your website through your login page or while visiting a certain page.
The reason behind this is something in your websites permission settings. It could be an inappropriately configured security plugin, corrupted .htaccess file, a problem with the server settings (by the hosting company).
22. Too Many Redirects Issue
Redirecting is an SEO function used by WordPress as well. There are plugins used for this function as well. However, things can go wrong with this function which results in such errors.
This error is a result of a reconfiguration of the redirecting tools used on your website. Because of which the users get stuck in a redirecting loop of two or more pages. And this error appears.
Themes
23. Updating to New Theme
WordPress newbies, as well as old users who want to change the theme of their website or add a child theme, sent requests to developers.
They just select the theme that they want and let the developers get their hand dirty with installing and configuring and getting the theme to look like the demo.
24. Add a slider
A slideshow of images on a web page is called a slider. They are used on websites to display portfolios or your business related images.
Its a quick and interactive way of showing the visitors the highlights of your website/ business.
Many WordPress themes have sliders in their demo’s. And if not you have the option of adding one through customization.
We get WordPress help requests to add a slider or to adjust the display of one similar to the demo etc.
25. Custom Landing Page
Landing pages are special pages meant to convert traffic into paying customers.
They are different from the home page of a website in many regards but mainly that they are built for conversations about your business.
A landing page is very important for traffic and your business. We get tickets to create Landing pages although people can create one on there own. This is because there are many features of a good Landing page (technical & marketing strategies), people understand its significance and want a job well done.
26. Add a New Page / Post
Adding a new post/ page is more of a DIY. However, we sometimes get such requests (especially for beginners).
Adding a new page can be tricky business if you are not familiar with terms like parent page, front page template, full-width page template etc.
There are boxes that you are asked to check containing options that you have no idea what they mean.
So people give us content with instructions for the page & bulk Content (pages/Posts). And we create it for them as instructed.
27. Edit an Existing Page / Post
Editing an existing page is another common support request that we get.
It includes things like changing the font size & style. Customizing the bullet points via CSS. Adding or removing commenting sections from pages.
28. Missed Scheduled Post
There is this beautiful built-in feature on WordPress that allows users to schedule posts for the future.
Blogger knows how important it is that their content gets published on time. It’s stressful when this function gets messed up and stops working.
This is where developers and support teams like ours jump in to help.
29. Create a Template as Per Theme Layout
It is very common nowadays that websites use different template designs for different categories, tags, and even custom posts.
For this purpose people often hire help to create a template just like they have inside their mind.
30. Install a Comment System
Comments section underneath posts is an efficient way to increase visitor interaction, it gives them a reason to return to your website.
There are many third party commenting systems for WordPress.
Like Disqus, jet pack and
We get WordPress help requests
31. Enable/Disable Comments
WordPress has a built-in commenting system which has a limited number of features. We Get requests to enable or disable is or a third party commenting system. Or to make setting changes depending on the user’s demands
WordPress users leave 77 million new comments each month.
32. Add Script to Page/Header of a Website
WordPress restricts tags inserted in your content to make the content stand out from the design.
This makes inserting a script very difficult. Layout, styling and uploading any type of script, all this is possible with JavaScript.
33. Add videos
With WordPress’s auto-embed feature adding videos to your website is generally an easy task.
Yet there is an endless list of things to troubleshoot while adding videos to your website.
Which is why we are often asked to embed videos on clients websites.
34. Add Audios
There are a variety of ways to add audios to your website
- Upload file
- Embed audio link
- Embed with sound-cloud audio player
- Add an audio widget
- Downloadable link
With so many options to choose from, adding audio can easily become confusing which is where we are asked to help.
35. Add Google Map
Google maps is a quick and easy way to visually communicate information about your location etc to your visitors.
There are multiple ways to add Google Maps to your website.
I can be done manually, by using plugins or even in a widget. With a variety of options from its placement to
36. Add Forms
Adding forms to a website is another support request that we come across.
37. Add to All Forms
Adding a reCAPTCHA to you’re forms is an efficient way to prevent spam form submission.
38. PDF and Spreadsheets in WordPress
Similar to embedding videos & audios on your website, you can add PDFs, PowerPoint slides, Excel sheets and Microsoft Word documents.
Requests for adding these files are pretty common although they are easy tasks once you get a hang of them.
Security
39. Clean Malware/Viruses
If your website has been attacked by malware or a virus, the chances are a lot of damage had already been done by the time you came to know that your website security had been comprised.
Now to be honest cleaning it is not going to be easy. And finding the cause of this is similar to finding a needle in a haystack.
This type of help request is classified as a task as fixing this problem can take a lot of time varying from website to website.
40. SSL Activation
SSL stands for the Security socket layer, which is a very effective and useful way to secure your WordPress admin panel.
An SSL certificate ensures that your website’s data is safely being transferred between browsers and web servers. Now search engines like
Google even give SEO points to websites with SSL certificate.
Hosts normally come with SSL certificates but if not you can always get on your own or send a help request for it.
41. Clean Up Spam Comments
Spams are a part of internet life. You can never fully get rid of them what you can do about spams is slow them down a notch.
There are steps that you can take in order to eliminate spams from your website like
- Restrict commenting to only subscribers
- Install anti-spam plugins like A-kismet
- Manually approve comments etc
If you have a lot of spam comments piled up, you can send a support request to get them all sorted out. They would either bulk delete them or install a plugin for it or even manually delete each and every comment.
42. This Site Ahead Contains Harmful Programs
If you are seeing this error on your website then you have the right to be freaking out.
What this means is that your website has either been hacked or contains distributing malicious content that when Google crawled and thought was harmful to visitors, hence blacklisted your website.
Now, this is something that is very serious as this is not only harmful to your traffic but is more harmful to you and your website. This error sometimes gets difficult to get rid off even after you have cleaned your website.
43. Rename WordPress Default wp-login.php URL
By default all the WordPress database have this:
Normally people don’t change this. But we would suggest that you change this prefix to something else due to the following security reasons.
Social Media
44. Incorrect Thumbnail on Facebook
Featured images are also known as thumbnails.
Facebook picks up the wrong thumbnail for posts for many reasons but most commonly its because there are other images which are larger than the featured images causing Facebook to miss the selected thumbnail for the post.
You can find solutions for this can be found manually or by specific telling Facebook which image to use or through installing a debug tool.
45. Add Social Media Share Buttons
Adding a social media share button is an effective way to boost traffic. It makes your website more engaging as visitors can share the content that like with their friends.
There are plenty of plugins out there easy social sharing solutions.
We can help install and configure such
Hosting
46. Site Migration
Moving to a new host because you are not satisfied with the current (site migration) is one of the most daunting things you will have to do with your website.
It is a painless process if the correct approach is applied and if not one wrong move can seriously damage your website.
This is why people hire
47. Internal Server Error
500 internal error means that something somewhere went wrong but it does not give any specific indication to the root cause of the problem.
It could be a corrupted .htaccess file issues with the theme or plugin or even the PHP memory limit.
Plugins
48. Install/Configure a Plugin
Installing and configuring advanced plugins is often a little more complicated than it sounds.
We receive a request for installing & configuring advanced plugins like Yoast quite frequently.
Widgets
49. Add a widget
Adding widgets is an easy code-free way of adding small function on your website, such as adding Google maps, social media icons & like buttons, quotes, photos, and advertising etc.
Widgets can be used in very creative ways:
- Sidebar on all pages.
- In the sidebar on a specific page. In a specific section on all pages.
- Above the footer area.
Speed Optimization
50. Optimize Images for Load Time
Site speed affects your website’s traffic as well as your SEO ranking.
Slow loading sites can be very frustrating for users (both visitors as well as the owner). WordPress website speed needs to be optimized.
Image optimization is the most frequent request we get.
Images are considered to be the slowest loading thing on a website. This is why optimizing images is critical for the health of your website.
51. Optimize Database
Cleaning out unwanted and unnecessary data from your website to improve site performance and reduce the database size.
The optimized database uses up less space on the disk, making it easier to backup & restore.
General Website & URL Issues
52. Change the Existing Page/Post URL
Changing the URL of an already existing post can be tricky business.
Because if the post has already been indexed by search engines it would lead to a 404 page and requires to be redirected the new URL.
Changing the URL (slug) from the default version is important for SEO. URLs are supposed to be simple and precise.
53. Speed Optimization of the Main/Home Page
Slow websites have higher bounce rates & lower SEO ranking.
Optimizing the home page of your website is critical as its what creates the first impression for your users. And a slow home page can prove to be the death of your traffic.
54. Cleaning of Sitemap Page
Sitemaps are the blueprints of your website, its created to help users and search engines to navigate through the accessible pages on your website.
If we see more than a 1% level of dirt, we don’t trust the Sitemap- Bing
They should be kept neat and clean. People who don’t understand site mapping get this type of task done sending a WordPress help request.
Users
We get support requests like these (rarely) but they are worth mentioning. These tasks are too simple to be charged for.
55. Add a New Users
We categorize this type of requests as tweaks (done under an hour)
The customer provides us with the email address of the New user that they want to add. We set-up the user’s account on the WordPress website and assign the chosen User role to this new user. Return the new user’s login details to the customer.
56. Set User Roles?
Normally this is something that people can do on their own. But sometimes we help and guide our customers about using and assigning user roles.
WordPress has different user roles that you can assign to new users. User roles basically control the level of power that a user has over your website.
Subscriber: Has the lowest level of power to your website, they can only leave a comment.
Contributor: Has slightly more power. A contributor can write a post but they don’t have the power to publish it & they can’t see the content written by others.
Author: In terms of authority, an author come above a contributor as they have the power to write a post, publish it but they can’t see drafts that have been saved by others.
Editor: An editor can write, edit and publish not only new content but also content written by others
Admin: Admin has the greatest power of all. They can control and contribute to the site in any way they want.
57. Delete A User?
This is the type of request that takes less than 5 minutes to complete (literally!). There is nothing complex about this request and generally only comes from those customers who don’t have any time to manage their website or have no idea about the back end of their WordPress website.
58. Responsive (Mobile/Tablet Friendly)
A mobile-friendly website has become very important nowadays since 63.4 % of the users use mobile devices to access the internet.
The website should have a display such that it fits any screen size. Such websites even have SEO perks.
59. Disable Trackbacks and Comments
Millions of Trackback spams & comment spams are sent by spammers to websites worldwide. Their target is to leave a link (in the comments) on your website. Generally, these are links directing towards illegal activities like scams or viruses or even selling drugs.
So if you are looking to get rid of trackbacks & comment notifications that you receive via email and are unable to do it on your own you can ask a support services provider by sending a WordPress help request.
60. Fix WordPress Not Sending Email Issue
This is one of the most frequently occurring problems that WordPress users face. But luckily this is an easy fix.
WordPress send you Emails when:
- You are using a third party plugin (like Woo-Commerce)
- Using Contact Forms on your website.
- Activity on WordPress such as comments on your post, new registration or automatic updates etc.
WordPress uses PHP (scripting language) so send emails through email. So if you are not receiving emails it might be because our hosting servers are not configured to use this function.
Conclusion
That’s quite a list.
Any WordPress website can face one or more of these issues any time.
Purpose of this list isn’t bombarding you with the possible issues you can face with WordPress, instead of knowing what can go wrong and how you can fix that particular problem or ask for the WordPress support from the professionals.
Maintaining a successful website is a time taking job, make sure that you monitor your WordPress website’s health score.
If you can’t manage it yourself you can always get help from the professionals.
Want to Learn More?
Here is the list of few other guides that will help you master WordPress.
- How to Build a Website – Start With Why
- What is WordPress? All You Need to Know
- How to Build a WordPress Website From Scratch
- How to Decide the Best Hosting for WordPress
- What is WordPress Management? All You Need to Know
- Best WordPress Plugins – Ultimate List
- Ultimate WordPress Security Checklist – Updated 2020
- 15 Best WordPress Themes for Blogs, Business & Ecommerce
- 11 Steps to Secure WordPress Website from Security Threats
- Image Optimization for WordPress in 2020: Everything You Need to Know
- How to Conduct a WordPress Site Audit – A Compete Guide
Source: https://wpsupportdesk.com/blog/wordpress-help/
