Help with critical error because i know nothing

hello everyone. i want to start off by saying i don’t know how to code, i am not a professional or anything like that.

my dad asked me this summer to re design his works website. the website was super outdated. I agreed since I have done this before but I made sure to emphasize i don’t have coding knowledge and i will just be playing around with the themes and adding more pictures and making the website aesthetic. that is exactly what i did. when i finished the website looked so much better and most importantly, worked perfectly fine. I did that in July.

Now in february, the IT guy has reached out to me saying there is a problem with the website and i need to update the plugins. (he could easily do this himself, but he has been bitter that i changed his website). so i go in and update the plug-ins and the error doesn’t go away. he then says it’s because my theme doesn’t work. so i changed the theme back to the old one and it still doesn’t work.

the error that shows up says “there has been a critical error”. he states that it is from me changing the website, even though that was 6 months ago.

is it really my fault this error is showing up? based on my research this error comes from like the code or like PHP script. i don’t even know what that means and i never had access to that side of wordpress. i literally only used the wordpress online.

can anyone help me/ give me advice about this. thank you!!

4 Comments
  1. Check whatever inbox that is set to the admin email, wordpress will send you a more detailed message about the error, and will usually tell you the exact plug-in or theme causing the error.

    A lot can cause the critical error message, usually plug-ins, but could be issues with a theme, php version, or any number of database issues. It’s a trial and error process of disabling stuff one at a time and seeing what changes.

  2. There’s a lot to unpack here. I’m going to just say this…is your dad the boss? If so, this IT guy needs to be helpful vs hurtful. Else, he deserves to be an Ice Tea guy.

  3. Have you tried debugging the non-code way?

    – Disable all plugins. Then activate one by one, if your site shows up. You’ll quickly find the culprit if it’s a bad plugin.

    – What theme? Try 2023 and see if that loads, if you don’t find a bad plugin.

    – Check the version of PHP running on the server. If it’s 8, set it back to 7.4.x and see if that resolves the issue.

 

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