Fix the ‘There has been a critical error on this website’ error

The ‘There has been a critical error on this website’ error is a generic error message that indicates a WordPress website has encountered an error with a plugin or theme. To fix the ‘There has been a critical error on this website‘ error, follow the steps below in sequential order.

A. Check your website error log report

The first step is to check your website error log report to figure out what component of your website is triggering the ‘There has been a critical error on this website’ error.

1. Log in to your hosting control panel
2. Click on the Account Usage button

3. Locate your website’s domain name under the Domain column
4. On your domain’s row, click on Error Log under the Logs column

5. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the report and locate the most recent date and time (timestamps are in EST- Eastern Standard Time) – this is your most recent error log entry
6. On the most recent error log entry, scroll all the way to the right (horizontally) to view the full error

7. The error log will indicate what component of your WordPress website is triggering the critical error. Normally, it will be a plugin or theme triggering the error, see the examples below:

If there is a plugin triggering the error, you will see it indicated like the format below. The name of the plugin triggering the error will be indicated after the / forward slash in front of the word plugins.

2023-11-09 19:37:32.076020 [NOTICE] [1681121] [T0] PHP Fatal error:  Uncaught Error: Call to undefined function hello_world() in /home/domains/skystrahelp/public_html/wp-content/plugins/helloplugin/functions.php:50

If there is a theme triggering the error, you will see it indicated like the format below. The name of the theme triggering the error will be indicated after the / forward slash in front of the word themes.

2023-11-09 19:37:32.076020 [NOTICE] [1681121] [T0] PHP Fatal error:  Uncaught Error: Call to undefined function hello_world() in /home/domains/skystrahelp/public_html/wp-content/themes/hellotheme/functions.php:50

8. Take note of the name of the plugin or theme causing the error. From our examples above, for the plugin error, the name of the plugin causing the error is helloplugin, and for the theme error, it is hellotheme.
9. Now that you’ve identified the component triggering the error, you need to disable it. Move to the steps below to disable the plugin or theme triggering the error.

B. Disable the plugin or theme causing the error

The next step is to disable the plugin or theme causing the error on your website.

1. Log in to your hosting control panel
2. Click on the File Manager button

3. Double click on the domains folder

4. Locate your website’s folder and double click on it

5. Locate the public_html folder and double click on it

6. Locate the wp-content folder and double click on it

7. In the wp-content folder, you will see a plugins and themes folder. If you are trying to disable a plugin, double click on the plugins folder. If you are trying to disable a theme, double click on the themes folder.

8. Inside the plugins or themes folder, locate the folder for the plugin or theme you are trying to disable (it will have the exact same name as from your error log).
9. Right click on the folder to reveal a dropdown and select Rename

10. In front of the existing name of your plugin or theme, put – old. For example, if your plugin folder name is akismet, then you would rename is to akismet-old

11. Once you’ve added – old to the plugin or theme folder name, click the Rename button to save it

12. Now, log in to your WordPress admin dashboard – it should now be loading
13. You can also reload your website and you should now see it loading

If the ‘There has been a critical error on this website’ error is still happening after you’ve completed the steps above, you can restore your website from backups.

C. Restore from backups

1. Open this guide: Restore hosting account data from backups
2. First, perform a restore for your website files only
3. If the ‘There has been a critical error on this website’ error is still happening, perform a restore for your database