You can troubleshoot it by accessing your cPanel, then navigating to File Manager, locating your site folder, and opening the wp-config.php file. From there, adjust the WP_DEBUG setting to true.
define( 'WP_DEBUG', true );
The proper process is, especially if your site is very outdated, is to create a staging environment and do all your updates and testing over there. That way you don’t crash your live site. Then as @shoaibqureshi stated turn debug mode on and fix each issue if you can or get the latest theme, plugins anything that you can to ensure everything is at its latest version.
Then once tested deploy back to live. That’s assuming nobody’s updating content on live.
when I activated my new theme’s plugin, this critical error message came up
Since theme and plugin compatibility is up to the theme and plugin developers, I recommend contacting your theme’s support about that.
Hey you’re getting close there @writeonsister now add that debug and we’ll be able to see the errors that are firing off.
Lots of good advice here but this is what I would do to debug this:
Thru cpanel (or ftp), use the File Manager in cpanel, go to the wp-content folder, and then under that, go to the themes folder, find the folder of the theme that is causing the error… rename that folder to something like “theme_name.bku”. ie: If the name of the theme is “Astra”, rename it “Astra.bku”. Then fire up WordPress. Since wp can’t find your active theme, it’ll grab another. If it fires up, the theme is the issue. If it DOES NOT fire up, it’s a plugin
Thank you so much for all these helpful suggestions. It looks like it’s a plugin issue. I’ve contacted the theme people. Really appreciate your insight.
