The site will not load, the store stops taking orders, or the dashboard locks you out after an update: we start from the facts, take a backup, isolate the layer that failed and test the fix on the same paths where it broke. This page also covers ongoing service, meaning the updates, backups and monitoring that make failures less frequent.
Who you are hiring
- Shipping commercial WordPress since 2006, before Gutenberg and the REST API
- Senior-led: the engineer at discovery is the engineer at the keyboard at week six
- No offshore handoff, no PM layer billed back to you
- WordCamp Europe organiser, WordPress Foundation Credits mentor
- Shopify Academy: CRO learning path plus Partner Marketing (Credly, 2025)
Shopify Academy credentials
Fix a WordPress site: symptom, cause and a safe first step
The most common failures have causes documented by WordPress itself. The table shows what usually sits behind each symptom and what you can check yourself without making things worse. If the first step does not help, or you have no access to the files, stop there and send a description.
| Symptom | Most common cause | Safe first step |
|---|---|---|
| White screen with no message | A PHP error in a plugin or theme, often right after an update | Over SFTP, rename the wp-content/plugins folder, and if that does not help, the active theme’s folder |
| ”There has been a critical error on this website.” | A fatal PHP error caught by WordPress (since version 5.2) | Check the admin email inbox: the message contains a recovery mode link that pauses the faulty plugin |
| 500 Internal Server Error | A corrupted .htaccess file, a plugin or the memory limit | Rename .htaccess, and once the site is back, save Settings, Permalinks again |
| Error establishing a database connection | Wrong credentials in wp-config.php or a database server that is down | Compare DB_NAME, DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD and DB_HOST with your hosting panel, ask your host about the MySQL status |
| Allowed memory size exhausted | A PHP memory limit set too low, or code that eats memory in a loop | Raise WP_MEMORY_LIMIT in wp-config.php, then find out what uses that much, because the limit alone only postpones the problem |
| Site stuck in maintenance mode | An interrupted update left a .maintenance file behind | Delete .maintenance from the root folder and finish the update that was interrupted |
| Redirects to unknown sites, spam in Google results | A hack, usually through an outdated or abandoned plugin | Do not delete files blindly: take a backup as evidence, change the dashboard, SFTP and database passwords, then clean up |
| WooCommerce store not taking orders | A plugin conflict, caching on the cart, or an error on the payment gateway side | Open WooCommerce, Status, Logs and check at which step the order stops |
Sources: Common WordPress Errors, Debugging in WordPress, Fatal Error Recovery Mode in 5.2, FAQ My site was hacked.
WordPress theme maintenance
A custom WordPress site based on a client-designed layout is essentially a custom WordPress theme. That is why we want to help you develop and maintain custom WordPress themes.
Do you need help with your WordPress website? Contact us for basic WordPress updates, an all-in-one solution covering themes, plugins, backups, security monitoring and uptime, as well as troubleshooting.
WordPress is one of the most popular platforms for building websites, but like any system, it can encounter various difficulties. Technical issues, code errors, or hacking attempts are just some of the problems you may face. If your site was built or heavily modified by an AI tool, the cleanup is a different animal: generated code tends to hide broken assumptions rather than obvious errors, so we treat it as a separate track in our AI-built website rescue work. That is why professional technical care is essential for keeping your site running smoothly.
Site check
See what your site shows in public
Give us the address of a site you run. We fetch it the way a browser would and show what follows from it, together with exactly what we read.
Paste your site’s address. The tool fetches it the way a visitor’s browser does and shows the response code after redirects, the headers, the weight of the initial page load and traces of WordPress. It does not log in and cannot see the dashboard, so it will not replace a diagnosis, but pasting the result into your request shortens the first conversation. A full description of what it measures is on the WordPress site check page.
Why does a WordPress site need technical care?
Owning a WordPress site is one thing, but keeping it in good shape is another story entirely. Over time, your site may become slower, may be exposed to various security threats, and it can even happen that one day the site stops working altogether. This is where professional technical care comes in. Thanks to regular updates, monitoring and quick intervention, your site will always be in top form.
WordPress support service: what technical care includes
Our technical care is a comprehensive service that covers various aspects of managing a WordPress site. We not only fix errors and resolve problems, but also carry out regular system and plugin updates, take care of security and handle site optimization. Keeping updates, backups, monitoring, and performance checks on one cadence lowers the odds that optimization work fights security work mid-sprint.
Theme and plugin updates
WordPress flexibility is provided by its custom building blocks. Both themes and plugins require regular maintenance.
Technical content updates
SEO-compliant content entry with all meta titles, tags and descriptions properly formatted.
Technical care
We ensure regular system, plugin and theme updates, while also monitoring security and site performance.
Regular backups
Frequent site data backups: monthly, weekly, daily or multiple times a day.
Server monitoring
Server monitoring to prevent downtime. Essential for eCommerce businesses.
Version control
We regularly create “copies” of your site, so you can revert to a previous version if something breaks.
Security
Let us handle the essential but distracting maintenance work that improves your site’s security.
Help - Website repair
Let us fix your broken WordPress website and soothe your frayed nerves.
Website support
Whether you need support growing your business, you can count on us.
How to plan WordPress theme development and optimization
Effective WordPress theme development always starts with defining the main goal of your site. However, this is not always achievable in the most optimal way: it requires extensive experience in web design. To make your WordPress site run as fast as possible, we discuss possible optimization approaches from our perspective and experience. You will find that the longer you work with us, the more you benefit from our deep knowledge of how to present your site online.
How quickly is an urgent WordPress failure handled?
In the online world, time is money. That is why I act as quickly as possible to minimize any downtime in your site’s operation. An urgent failure gets priority over planned work. What is more, I offer transparent pricing and an individual approach to each client.
How does the WordPress repair process work?
1
A request with facts
The page URL, when the failure started, recent changes and what is blocked: checkout, login or publishing.
2
Backup before any change
A restore point for files and database, and when the incident allows it, reproducing the fault outside production.
3
Isolating the layer
Hosting, core, theme, plugin, custom code, external API, cache or DNS. We fix the smallest responsible layer.
4
Testing and a written record
The reported scenario and neighbouring paths run again, and the change and the rollback point go into a note.
A useful support request starts with facts, not guesses. We record the affected URL, the first known occurrence, recent deployments or updates, the expected behaviour, and whether checkout, login, publishing, or another business-critical path is blocked. Screenshots help, but browser and server logs, request identifiers, and exact reproduction steps shorten diagnosis much more.
Before changing production, we preserve a restorable backup and reproduce the fault in a protected environment whenever the incident allows it. We then isolate the smallest responsible layer: hosting, WordPress core, theme, plugin, custom code, external API, cache, or DNS. This keeps a visible symptom from triggering an unnecessary rebuild.
The repair is complete only when the original scenario and neighbouring paths pass again. For a checkout fault, that means more than seeing the cart page load: we test payment hand-off, confirmation, email, stock movement, and relevant analytics. For an editorial fault, we test preview, publishing, media, permissions, and cache invalidation. We document what changed, what was deliberately left unchanged, and the rollback point. If the root cause remains outside our control, such as an upstream service, we provide the evidence and a safe containment plan rather than presenting a workaround as a permanent fix.
WordPress support: what to prepare for your request
Most of the time at the start of an incident goes into getting access and working out what changed. These things speed up the start more than anything else:
Description of the failure
- the URL of the page where the problem shows
- when it first appeared
- what changed just before: an update, a new plugin, a migration, a DNS change
- the exact error message or a screenshot
Access
- a separate administrator account in WordPress, not your own
- SFTP or SSH to the site files
- the hosting panel with access to the database and error logs
- for a store: read-only access to the payment gateway dashboard
Send credentials through a separate channel, not in the form message. When the work is done, delete the account you created for us and change the SFTP password: that is good practice with any contractor, not just with us. WordPress guidance on passwords, accounts and permissions is collected in the Hardening WordPress guide.
WooCommerce repair: when the store stops selling
A store outage costs more than an outage on a company site, because every hour means orders that never came in. With WooCommerce, the homepage coming back proves nothing: the repair is done only when a test order goes through the cart, payment, the confirmation email and the stock update. WooCommerce writes errors to logs available in the dashboard (WooCommerce, Status, Logs), and the system status report in the same section shows the environment, versions and overridden templates. Both are worth attaching to your request.
When the store runs but has been losing orders, payments or integrations for a while, a time-boxed WooCommerce rescue sprint works better than a one-off repair.
Your WordPress site is down. Describe what you see
The address, when it broke and recent changes are enough to start. Pricing is individual and follows the incident description, and work starts once the scope is written down.
Send a failure descriptionRelated delivery work sits under WordPress maintenance.
