Dear Linda,
My website broke after I updated WordPress! Why does that happen? How annoying. Why is WordPress such a fuss budget? My friend was just telling me all her photos stopped working on one of her sites (she has something that switches them up) they simply disappeared and she had to reload them all.
Signed, Upset WordPress User
Dear Upset,
I am 95% sure it was not WordPress. It was one of your plugins.
Many people think WordPress “runs” everything you use when you are working in WordPress, but they don’t.
This can be confusing. Sometimes clients call me and say, ” I need to call WordPress, they need to fix this.”
There is really no where you can call, it does not work like that. Here is why.
WordPress is what is called an “Open Source Project“.
Everything you see from the documentation to the code itself, was created by and for the community.Which means there are hundreds of people all over the world working on it. (More than most commercial platforms.) It also means you are free to use it. As in the entire set up is completely FREE. This also means the only customer support you will find is to do a search on one of the WordPress forums. For those who have their own hosting, you would go here:
http://wordpress.org/support/
For those on the free version who are hosting with WordPress.com
you would go here:
http://en.forums.wordpress.com/
Why does this matter? Well since WordPress most likely did not break your site, the culprit most of the time is a plugin you are using.
WordPress itself, the program, is usually pretty well tested and working when they release the new updates, but your plugins are a completely separate entity.These are created by what is called “third party developers”. Plugins can be created by anyone and most of the plugins you will find and see out there are offered for free as well.
Plugin creators range from beginners to serious programmers who just want to help, to people who develop and sell their plugins.
There is no one checking these and regulating them, (other then the users themselves).
Many plugins I used over time have been abandoned by the person who created them because they did not have time to keep up with all the changes in WordPress, or they got a full time job, or they lost interest or they just burned out trying to help people for free, and trouble shooting websites all the time. What started as a fun hobby became too much work for no money.
( This is another good reason to donate a little cash to your favorite plugin developer, many of the plugins have donate buttons built in now.)
What is the solution when my WordPress site breaks after an update?
- First make sure all your plugins are up to date.
If that does not fix it you will need to- - Deactivate all your plugins and then reactivate them one by one until you find the one causing the problem.
Sometimes just simply turning them “on and off” will fix the problem. - If you are still having problems, you can hire someone to figure it out and fix the site for you, or spend some time in the WordPress forums looking for some answers.
- Finally if you are using a free WordPress theme, this is exactly the same set up as with the plugins so you may run into some problems with your theme, and you may need to buy a professional theme to avoid this kind of problem in the future.
I am available for hire if your site is broken and I also offer my clients monthly WordPress support for a small monthly charge.
Contact me here.