Alright, well welcome everyone to fighting your own demons, how to deal with all your WordPress problems at once.
I will hand this off to our presenter today, Kirsten Starker, and I will stop sharing my screen.
Nice to meet you all. Yes, I will be talking about how to fight. All your own demons.
And solve all your WordPress problems all in one go. So that's my lofty goal for the day here.
Who am I? I have been working on the web since there was a web for about, you know, 25 years and I've been working mainly in WordPress for well over 10 of those years.
I call myself a front end developer mainly, but I like doing a lot of other things too. I obviously really enjoy professional photo sheets.
So this is not really a very technical talk. I'm not going to show you any code. This is more about the mindset and the approach that's helped me for the last few decades.
And if you're running into the same sorts of problems again and again, or if you're new to it and it's all just sort of an overwhelming mush.
Then this might help you. So this is going to be more of an advice column. I'll go through some of the scenarios and the approaches that I keep in mind while I'm working on things and once we get through it all we can kind of make it more of a conversation.
So we're going to look at the different problems that can occur with WordPress sites and a strategy for troubleshooting each problem.
So your part of a team setting up a new WordPress site for your business or your art or your dream.
Maybe you're the client, maybe you're the developer or the designer, maybe you're tackling it all on your own.
So you've got all these great ideas and WordPress seems like a terrific way to bring them all to life.
Maybe your site is already up and running. Maybe it's still in progress. But then Something's gone horribly wrong!
So here's a selection of some of the more common demons that you may find yourself battling.
Your site may be completely down. You might be getting a 500 error. There might be a critical error.
Your site might just be doing something weird. The code is buggy. Something isn't displaying the way that you want.
You're getting a non fatal error. Your site has been hacked or defaced. Your site is just slow.
And maybe the traffic is kinda disappointing. Maybe you're working for a client who's really unhappy.
Maybe you're working with a coworker, colleague, or a contractor who's just Really frustrating and you can't get through to them.
So, what are we gonna do? First of all, you're going to stay calm.
And I'm going to go into each of these in more detail in a moment. You're gonna retrace your steps.
You look for the root of your conflict and then you start to troll shoot. So.
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Just updated all your plugins and suddenly you're site is gone. So when it's not obvious what's happened.
You have to retrace your steps, you know, a bit like looking for your lost keys, kind of when did I have them last?
So when do you last know that the site was working? And what has happened since then. So have you made any changes recently?
Did you maybe update the plugins last week and the problem is only actually visible now. Has somebody else who's working on the site possibly made changes.
Has something about the environment change like server updates or domain name that's failed to renew. I mean there is also the possibility of a hack in which case you aren't the one who made the changes.
In this case, your job is to find out what changed and how. You're retracing and erasing someone else's steps.
Other than that, the process is pretty much the same.
So troubleshooting is the process of investigating until you find out the root of your problem. If you're dealing with a WordPress issue, the conflict might be between bits of code, or it might be a conflict between what it's doing and what you expect it to do. If you're
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Backup to be one thing so in a crisis that counts. Also I'm assuming that you have backups and a way of making regular backups and because that's probably more important than many of my other tips and because that's probably more important than many of my other tips, because that's probably more important than many of my other tips.
There is nothing like the joy of realizing when some of my other tips. There is nothing like the joy of realizing when something's gone horribly wrong that you can restore a is it it is it is such a relief.
If you think you're going to be experimenting with a lot of different changes, you can take screenshots of your settings pages or make a note of what you're changing so you know what you started with and what you've tried already.
Here's an example of a nasty looking settings page where if you just go in and, you know, change a few things, you could completely lose track of what you changed if you don't do that.
So if you're new to coding, you've probably already discovered some of the things that can go wrong.
Everyone gets hung up on a mismatched parenthesis or an accidental missing semicolon once in a while.
If you're not running on a live site, you can turn on PHP errors, so it will tell you what line is breaking.
Bad logic means that your code is running, but what you think you've asked it to do and what it's actually doing.
Are different. So you might be feeding the wrong variables to a function or you might have put a critical statement in the wrong part of the process.
So you can leave yourself little breadcrumbs along the way to hone in on why you're going off crack, you know, display the value of those variables, show everything that's going on.
And, and just put those in a little regular, regular intervals. Sometimes it's even something stupid like you're working in the wrong file without realizing it and you keep making changes and refreshing it and it's just not happening.
Happening and you are sure that your code is correct and it still aren't working and then you realize you've been editing the wrong file all along and when you catch yourself doing this go ahead and fix the problem and then step away from the screen and go for a nice walk outside because you've been staring at your computer for too long and you need to stop.
Now at this point, programming languages are mostly still written by humans. And so us humans need to be able to describe what's going on.
You're not sure about your logic, look at it and read out exactly what it's doing line by line as if it were.
Just a sentence, practically in English. This isn't gonna help you with something like a semicolon in the wrong place, but it might help your brain trace what's happening.
If you got AI to generate your code, it's actually even more important that you can follow what it's doing.
It's actually even more important that you can follow what it's doing. Because sometimes it's not right either.
So here we've got an example where, you know, we've got a some instructions on how to clean the fridge and it's just, you know, this isn't code.
This isn't gonna compile. This isn't gonna run, but if you look at the actual code that you've written and you sort of think of each line as an English.
Statement or whatever your mental language is then then you may have a better understanding of where something's going wrong, where you might have given it the wrong instruction.
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First of all, our people actually in danger of dying.
Unless your WordPress site is running some kind of life support system and honestly I don't think that's a thing.
Anybody would run WordPress. Probably, probably not, probably nothing really, really major is going to go horribly wrong in the world because your website is down.
Your client might think so because for the past 20 min, nobody has been able to buy their precious widgets.
And they're really upset because you know they've lost 20 min of widget sales. And it's understandable.
They, you know, they are expecting a thing to be happening. That's not happening, but still.
You gotta put this into a perspective, okay, there's a problem, but it is not going to kill anyone.
So first you need to figure out what the possible culprits are. So you need to get a sense, get familiar with what specific types of problems are most likely to appear at each level because there are different there's a different set of errors that are associated with, like your server or your host going down, then there are with They're being a bug in your theme.
If Chrome is telling you it can't find your site, you know, domain name not resolved, then it's going to be a domain name issue.
You don't even have to think about your theme or your plugin because that is not the problem.
So as you get more experienced you you start to learn where is the first place to look.
But if you haven't found the corporate yet, what can you rule out? Can you prove that it's not the theme or it's not the plugin?
Or if you found out that it is in the theme code that you're working on, how can you hone in on what bit of code is causing the problem?
If you can't find the answer, find everything that isn't the answer. So that might mean you deactivate the plugin or you switch to the default theme, see if you still have the problem.
It might mean you comment out a big section of code to see if that's the problem Maybe something works on one page, but it doesn't work on another.
So what is different about those pages? Do they have different, are they using different templates? Do you have different short codes on them?
Are you using different? Blocks? What is it about that page that you can? And say, that's different.
What are plug-in conflicts? It could be a plugin trying to alter the same WordPress functionality as another plugin it could be that they're using different versions of the same jquery, you know, and and so they're conflicting with each other because one needs one version and one is expecting another it could be that a plugin is out of date and it conflicts with the latest
WordPress and or it's not up to WordPress standards. So there's a lot of different reasons why you could be having problems with one plugin.
If you can't tell what plugin is causing the
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Folder using SFTP or the command line. I gotta stop waving my hands so much, Zoom is thinking I'm giving a thumbs up, but I am.
So if your site is buggy. It's pretty much the same approach as if your site is down, but it's a little bit less alarming.
You're still going to try to break the problem down into smaller parts and tell you understand the root of the conflict.
So this could be something as simple as a form that won't submit. That's often a problem with the JavaScript that's validating the form.
So you could look where is the JavaScript coming from, your theme or a plugin, what message do you get in the JavaScript console?
Can you track it down? That way.
If your site is slow. Sometimes if it's just a temporary issue at your host and you ignore it for a little bit, it'll go away.
Sometimes it's something in between you and the host. So if this is something that's just come up.
Briefly, you know. Today, then it's it it often just resolves itself. If it's an ongoing thing it could be that you have too much traffic or that your host has some sort of issue going on and then you might want to invest the hosting.
I had a scenario once with a host that was just notoriously slow and I ended up porting the site to another host just to prove to the client who was absolutely convinced it was a problem with the site.
And I showed it to him on another host and it worked extremely fast there, same site, different host, world of difference.
It could be that, you have a plugin or a theme that is bogging something down.
So again, you go through the same process, deactivate, switch things out and and test.
Know one thing at a time same approach
Maybe you're not getting the sort of traffic that you want. I don't know if anybody remembers this.
90, s, eighties, movie, thought I don't even know, field of dreams. They had, there was this tag line, if you build it, they will come.
And like he he decides to build this baseball field and his in his. Cornfield and then all these ghosts and famous baseball players come and it's all magical.
But a lot of people approach their website like that with kind of an if you build that they will come mentality and have no SEO strategy, no marketing plan.
Someone else you're not going to get results you need to start applying your troubleshooting steps to your marketing strategy and you may need to get someone who knows how to do that properly.
It's a whole different set of talents and skills. And so you will need to work with them to make changes to figure out where to promote your site properly what tweaks need to be made to.
You know, just to boost that.
So now we can start to try to apply some of the same principles that we've talked about to dealing with conflict that we're having with other humans.
Now I gotta say this doesn't always work quite as reliably because humans unfortunately are more complex and nuanced than a WordPress site.
And sometimes 2 people just aren't a good fit and you can't always just swap them out like themes and plugins and that can be frustrating.
But here's some thoughts on how to make the best of working together.
So what were those steps again? What does this look like when you're dealing with a problem with people?
So, stay calm. Make sure in any scenario that you can be grounded and calm enough to be able to listen.
And hear what the other person is trying to tell you. As well as being able to convey what you need to tell them.
In a reasonable and respectful manner. If you don't think that you can do that without getting upset.
Let them know you're gonna need a moment. Find a better time to have the conversation when you're calm.
Do not go into it if if emotions are running high, it usually doesn't help.
Retrace your steps. What is the context? What is actually happening? Does it even have anything to do with you?
The root of your conflict don't assume that you know what's going on for them it may be that the problem the reason that they're upset with you it might it may be part of a bigger picture it might be that the last developer that they worked with bailed on them and failed to do something and they're anxious and worried because they think the same behavior is going to come from you.
It might be that they have something going on in their personal life that is, that means they're at their threshold and they're having trouble with anything that is slightly difficult.
So look at what need they have that isn't being met right now. And what need are you trying to meet?
And just like in technical troubleshooting, try to understand the situation before you start tinkering with it.
So if your client is panicking about a problem with a site, let them know you've heard them and you understand how important this is to them.
Give them a realistic timeframe in which you expect the problem to be resolved and then stick to it.
If you guess wrong, just keep updating them so they know you're on the case. So if they're unhappy because of your communication time or style, are you taking a long time to respond?
Are you giving them too much or too little information. Have you been clear on what you're going to be providing?
Are they expecting something from you that, you never agreed to deliver. Did you maybe over promise and under deliver?
Because it really needs to be the other way around.
So maybe instead of a client you're dealing with a frustrating coworker of some sort. So some things to think about have you been moving the goalposts?
One of the most frustrating situations for anyone building anything is when the parameters keep changing. It's really disheartening to have to do work over and over again.
When you were proud of it the first time and have to redo it or to have to change direction when you thought you had a clear picture of what was coming up.
Are you clear on what you're asking for from them? Make sure your project has very thorough and clear business requirements so the people working on the site know exactly what they're building.
Or you might get unexpected results.
Have you been listening to what they're trying to tell you? If someone has been warning you that there's going to be problems or that they don't have the skills or enough time to do what you're asking and you don't take that to heart, you will be surprised when the project doesn't turn out quite right.
Are you giving them space to work? Keeping track of progress is important but if you get too involved you can actually interfere with that progress.
Set dates for check-ins in advance and don't hover. Let them do the job.
So setting expectations is best done right at the start of the relationship.
If you like to block out chunks of focus time while you're working and you don't want to be interrupted, you don't want to be reached.
Just let people know that's a thing that can happen. I often tell that to my clients that I I will only you know I I will check emails at a certain point I will check my phone messages at a certain point but if I need to focus all of that is off.
If you don't answer the phone, but you do answer emails, let them know. That's the best way to reach you.
You know, if you want to phone me then just send me a note and we'll set up a time.
So yeah, figure that out, figure that out, figure out how you'd like to connect and let them know.
Some people, some of your clients will be more phone people, some of your developers will be more email or text people.
And you might not have the same style, but try to meet in the middle where you can.
Leave a little wiggle room when you're estimating time. Always give yourself a little extra just in case you run into trouble along the way.
People will always be thrilled if you come in under your estimate and they will be angry if you go over.
Put the odds in your favor. Give yourself a little breathing room. So also you don't have to be anxious if things run on a little later than you thought.
And you can stay calm.
Be realistic about what you can and you can't do. If you think you're going to be likely to run into trouble in a particular part of the work, let people know so they aren't broad-sided when you come back saying that you're gonna need a few more hours or weeks or have to buy this extra plug-in to make it happen.
So. Sometimes a person who's upset just needs to know that you heard them. And it can be really hard to not immediately jump into explanations or defenses if you're feeling that you're under attack.
Reflecting back to them what you've heard from them. In your own words can make a big difference.
If you get it right, you will actually feel them relax or their tone will change. And they may be a little more willing to listen to your explanation.
So that might look something like, I'm hearing that you're really worried about slow loading time.
Are you getting frustrated that the development site isn't looking exactly like the designs? And once they know that we're talking about the same thing, then they will probably set back and let you talk.
Maybe you're the one who's angry or concerned. You want to take more of a collaborative tone.
Put things in terms of we instead of you and I, you need to do this. Bringing it back to we helps reduce the sense of confrontation and it brings the focus back to the goal that we have in common.
Talking about how is this going to impact the project or how is this going to impact the budget? Like these are things that we you know we we both want we want to see this succeed.
Usually in nonviolent communication, we learn ways of describing our emotional state to the person that we're having conflict with.
In a work scenario, the person you're dealing with may not care how you feel. And sometimes getting into your emotions might not be appropriate.
So you do need to approach it more from kind of the big picture being the the project, the budget.
What your common interest is. So that might sound like I'm I completely understand that seeing another round of revisions would really be helpful.
But we would have to delay the launch to fit that in. And I know that launching on time is very important to you.
So you're addressing what you know matters to them, which is the launch, and you're acknowledging their wish for, you know, yet another round of revisions, but just telling them that these are the consequences of that.
If you bring up a problem but you don't make a request or a suggestion, it kind of leaves the other person hanging and it looks a bit more like a confrontation that they have to resolve and they have to kind of guess at what you want.
So making a constructive suggestion is a good way to show them that you're interested in finding a solution.
It's better than just a no. It's a no, but here is a thing that we could do instead.
If you're making a request. Be prepared to hear and know and to adapt your own plan.
If what you are asking for isn't optional, it's not a request. Ultimatums can work to get the job done.
But they can also damage your relationship with the other person. Nobody really wants to be in a situation where they feel that they are under threat.
So that might look something like, can we agree on a weekly meeting to check in on the site's progress rather than saying I need you to send me your update every Thursday.
So I have a lot more resources here on. Sort of the communication sides of things. The, the nonviolent communication approach was developed by a fellow named Marshall Rosenberg and it's been used all over the world.
And all sorts of mediation. All sorts of scenarios and it's really great kind of at the individual relationship level.
There's a whole world of things to go into. One book that I really love on the topic is say what you mean by, one book that I really love on the topic is Say What You Mean by RJ.
Sofa, which also takes sort of a mindfulness and approach to it as well as giving you great tools for how to.
How to look at how you're communicating. The third link here is also, a, It's about nonviolent communication in the workplace.
And, that, yeah, it just has some. Some good ways of sort of bridging all of this.
And at this point, I be delighted to invite any questions. If you don't get to you this time or if you have anything else that you'd like to chat about, feel free to send me a note.
I'm gonna be offering a separate online course later this year about troubleshooting I'm just developing it now and if you'd like to find out more about that.
Feel free to sign up there.
There we have it. I'll and it back to court.
Yeah, thanks, Kirsten. Yeah, I shared a link to the resources.
It includes what you just shared in the last slide plus more. So, check that link out for some more troubleshooting links.
Okay.
We actually did not have any questions that came up during your presentation. Which means I think it was very clear and very helpful.
In the chat, Martha says, terrific presentation, so thank you.
Room a queen.
And just rolling back just to see, yeah, folks.
Just chatting. Yeah, it says he likes the nonviolent communication approach.
Absolutely.
It is totally life changing. Okay. I mean, it's like I kind of thought that I was a pretty good communicator and started to notice little ways you know when I when I get upset about something some of my word choices that could be improved on, not even that I'm not like I'm swearing in people or something, but.
Hmm.
Subtle ways that we have in our language. You know, even like saying. I feel patronized is is puts the accusation on the other person, you are patronizing me and it immediately sets you up for confrontation and as soon as you have that, then the other person will get defensive and they don't listen.
So it's all about sort of how to de-escalate a situation so that you can both listen to each other and resolve things.
Oh well, let's see. What if you have a client who makes the changes and then accuses you of making other changes they didn't ask for, but you know you didn't and this happens over and over again.
Okay.
Oh yeah. That sounds like fun. So there's a couple of things that you could do.
Hmm.
If I were in that situation, I would put a logging plugin on the site. And then it would you would have a simple record.
That this audit log and it would say who last saved the page and then you could fist very calmly say Oh, okay.
Yeah, no, I see that that page changed and, let me just have a quick look at the audit log.
Oh yeah, it looks like a user, client name. Did it last? You know who that might have been?
And that's probably going to be the last, you know, and again, be very non confrontational about it.
Just, but be prepared, whatever you can do to track. Changes. That should help. A logging plugin.
Hmm.
There's one I think I've used one called WP audit log but I'm not sure how granular it gets with the changes.
So you might wanna dig around a little bit. Okay, question about troubleshooting form submissions.
How long? Do you usually wait to assess if you notice no SEO? If I don't think I'm getting form submissions, I jump on that pretty fast and I'll test it and like make any time that I make any changes to forms or form plugins.
I'll make sure the form is still working because it's really horrible when 2 months go by and you realize that you your contact form hasn't been working and you don't know what you've lost.
So I usually, I usually jump on that pretty fast. Sometimes it ends up being an SMTP issue like the male actually can't go out.
So I try to use plugins where it also stores the submissions in the WordPress database.
So if you're using contact form 7, you use flamingo as well and then it saves it online.
If you're using gravity forums, it saves all the submissions for you. So then you know if your if your problem is with the form.
The functionality of the form or if it's with maybe it the problem is actually with the male that's not getting sent to you.
So that helps you narrow it down. Turning on PHP errors. That is, it's not a plug-in, it's something going to be in how your server or your host is configured.
So It, it basically will show you all the errors. It's a setting in your PHP config file and it'll show you all the errors.
There are other ways of seeing the errors like PHP will also give you an error. So depending on your setup and this is going to be you know unique to everybody.
You will look for that PHP error log and then you'll see where the errors and warnings are in there.
It takes a bit of digging, but. It's essential. The topic of more budget needed for paid plugins even with discovery yeah I give clients kind of a range of what to expect like we may need some plugins I think we're going to need this one in that one it's possible when we get to something else that we may need to buy another one.
And it gives again that sort of sense of wiggle room that they are now prepared for the possibility that there might be another, you know, 20 to $100 expense down the line.
Yeah, just in the discovery process being being a little broad about it and and and having that in your contract that any plugins are the responsibility of the clients and client and.
Maybe additional expenses just so they know. So that's the main thing. It's the setting expectations and upfront this and this can happen.
How I uploaded a site to another host to test speed. Oh, all I did was clone it.
Like I just made a backup and restored the backup on the other host so that I had to clone version of the site and then I could show the client like, look, this is the exact same site on your host.
Test it out and then go to this other place where I've set it up and test it out.
The the weird thing in that scenario to be honest was that even after seeing the site load you know 3 times faster on the other host the client hand is he had this Very strong loyalty to his host, which and he still he still wanted to stay with his existing host And Like, okay, that's your call.
Ultimately, if somebody wants to make a, a, well, ultimately, if somebody wants to make a, a decision about their website and if it's not going to you know be a massive security problem and to hurt anybody then It's their call, so.
But it was sort of a proof of concept, at least, and it made me feel better that I knew that it wasn't something I was doing wrong with his website.
So sometimes that's the best you can do is put your own mind at ease.
So.
Did I get everybody here? I think so. Yes. Yeah, and you can find ways where, you know, Rana says here, some clients are always right.
And there is a certain element of that that, you know, the customer is always right and there is You definitely don't want to get into a kinda budding head situation where you want to prove them wrong.
You can usually find a graceful way. To be like, that, yeah, I, I can absolutely see why, why you would want to do that.
And I can understand coming from, why you would want to do that. And I can understand coming from, you know, the situation that you just came from.
And also, here is this other way. I like sometimes to give to give options.
You can, you can stay with the way that you're doing this. That would happen. Or there is also this other possibility.
And usually when you spell something out and you let them make the choice.
Give them a little time and most clients will come around. Not everybody. It's all part of the the joy.
I think that's all of the questions. I did have a question that that came up as Not related to this content and I was trying to, find some information, but, one of our attendees is looking for information on how to get visitor information to your site.
Like something native to WordPress or even a course about how to add Google Analytics.
And I am not finding anything specific on learn, right now, but, I'll just share in the chat, a link to, to learn if folks want to.
Look for more resources. That are official to wordpress.org. Of course there are plenty of other resources out there lots of other educators.
Within the WordPress community. And yeah, it seems to start there, start at learn.
And then yeah, just. Good old Google searches or even on YouTube. Hi, I imagine you can find something there.
There is a world of Magic and good stuff, at learned@wordpress.org
So.
Yeah, so let me.
I. I'm always impressed by just a broad range of what you've got and the dedication so thanks for putting all this together.
Yeah. I did have just a closing slide here just to.
Okay.
Share a little bit more. Yeah, so like we mentioned, learn WordPress is, the, kind of official educational resources for the WordPress open source project.
But again, there are so much out there, lots of folks in the community donating their time and their knowledge to everyone else.
If you want to keep in touch and like I mentioned earlier, we. Except folks that want to volunteer to share their knowledge with us the community via learn WordPress.
So, we have the making word press slack, which is@chat.word press.org and you can join the training channel there.
If you do social media things, I use Mastodon and LinkedIn.
So if you want to get in touch there. And oh I know that you shared your contact information before but I'll go back to Kirsten's email there if folks wanted to note that as well.
And yeah, that is it. It looks like.
Just double checking for any of the more questions at the minute last minute. I think we're good.
So yeah. Oh, you want the email up again? There we go.
I'll give you a second to copy that.
Okay. Yeah. We should probably get a less clicky keyboard for these things.
A perfect
Okay. There you go. Yeah, thank you everyone for being here today and thank you Kristen for sharing and get another great.
Presentation with us.
Thanks for having me.
Yeah. Alright, we'll see you folks next time.