[Solved] There has been a critical error on this website.

Since WordPress 5.3 the FATAL PHP error have been replaced with there has been a critical error on this website. The reason WordPress did this is to avoid letting hackers or spammers know the structure of your files. To make WordPress more secure and reduce vulnerability, FATAL error have been replaced with there has been a critical error on this website. WordPress also sends email to admin email address trying to help you fix error and bring your website online as soon as possible.

Quick Tip: To track what’s the error about exactly. Turn your website’s debug mode on. Once you turn the debug mode on you would get the details which file is causing. There has been a critical error on your website error. Make sure to check your site’s error logs on your server also. See below how to turn on debug mode. Turning on the debug mode you would know if the problem is with plugin, theme or WordPress.

While WordPress gives you message There has been a critical error on your website. Please check your site admin email inbox for instructions. They also share helpful article’s link on wordpress.org Learn more about debugging in WordPress.

Please note: There has been a critical error on this website error taken place of. There has been a critical error on your website since WordPress 5.7. Which was Your website is facing technical difficulty till 5.3.

• How to Stop Your WordPress Emails Going to SPAM
• How To Fix WordPress Not Sending Email Issue

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Between WordPress 5.2 and WordPress 5.3 we used to get error The site is experiencing technical difficulties. But with latest release of WordPress 5.4 i think WordPress developers have changed message you would receive also. If you know how to deal with the site is experiencing technical difficulties same methods apply to solve. There has been a critical error on your website.

What is in Email which WordPress Sent You?

While your website is not working and there is possibility of FATAL PHP error which stops WordPress to run. To help you further debug and resolve issue WordPress send you Email with error details. Your Installation and theme details. Details of Email you would receive are listed below.

Subject: [Your Website] Your Site is Experiencing a Technical Issue

Email Body

Howdy!

Since WordPress 5.2 there is a built-in feature that detects when a plugin or theme causes a fatal error on your site, and notifies you with this automated email.

In this case, WordPress caught an error with your theme, Webful Creations.

First, visit your website (https://www.webfulcreations.com/) and check for any visible issues. Next, visit the page where the error was caught (https://www.webfulcreations.com/wp-admin/themes.php) and check for any visible issues.

Please contact your host for assistance with investigating this issue further.

If your site appears broken and you can’t access your dashboard normally, WordPress now has a special “recovery mode”. This lets you safely login to your dashboard and investigate further.

Recovery Mode URL here.

To keep your site safe, this link will expire in 1 day. Don’t worry about that, though: a new link will be emailed to you if the error occurs again after it expires.

When seeking help with this issue, you may be asked for some of the following information:
WordPress version 5.4
Current theme: Webful Creations (version 1.0)
Current plugin:  (version )
PHP version 7.1.14

Error Details
=============
An error of type E_PARSE was caused in line 52 of the file /home2/ateeqrafeeq/public_html/wp-content/themes/webfulcreations/functions.php. Error message: syntax error, unexpected ‘endif’ (T_ENDIF), expecting end of file

Since the error details at end of email states clearly the issue with which file is even its telling the line which have problem. You can edit that file and solve the problem easily. Or you can enter recovery mode and troubleshoot the problem.

Didn’t you get email related to There has been a critical error?

Sometime if WordPress unable to perform email function properly. You do not get the email which WordPress have sent to WordPress admin email address.

If you haven’t received any email from WordPress. Simply turn on the debug mode following step below. And you would knot the exact error details which is producing the critical error on your WordPress website.

So you are curious if WordPress lie with you?

No! WordPress sent you email using your host email processor. So kindly check your SPAM folder if you may have received email in SPAM folder. If not then after you login WordPress admin go to Settings >> General and update your email address. So next time WordPress send you email that arrive on your right address.

If you are sure everything is right you are not getting emails your server’s SMTP maybe not functioning properly. You can get in touch with your web hosting to know more about details.

Manual Upgrade or Update in Process? Please wait

When you update themes, WordPress, Plugins through WordPress admin panel or dashboard. During upgrades WordPress creates a .maintenance file in your root directory. Which stop WordPress to run and produce similar or FATAL errors. Cause during the upgrade process there are many files are being overwritten which means broken code. But when you are doing upgrade manually there is no existence of .maintenance mode which can produce such issues. So complete your update in case you are running the update process.

• Briefly Unavailable For Scheduled Maintenance.

What’s Causing There has been a critical error on your website.

As WordPress said itself ” Since WordPress 5.2 there is a built-in feature that detects when a plugin or theme causes a fatal error on your site, and notifies you with this automated email. ” So its clear these type of issues come up with PHP FATAL errors. FATAL errors are when php stop running further and force you to resolve the issues before it can complete process. With FATAL error your request cannot be completed. Instead of showing broken pages with several errors WordPress now display decent message. That’s it.

No email? Check server error logs (error_log)

If you’re not receiving the email from WP, you can check the server logs and grab the entry that relates to this issue? That may can help you figure out the solution also. You can access error log via FTP or cPanel going to root directory of WordPress installation. Also you can talk to your Hosting provider to know the location where error logs are being maintained as its different for each host.

Quick Tip Turn on Debug Mode

The quickest way to know why WordPress is throwing this error or what’s causing the problem. Edit your wp-config.php from WordPress’s root folder then follow final steps on this post below.

Turn on debug mode so you can find more details about the issues you are facing. Try to find errors log in your FTP that can also guide you about problem.

//Turn on Debug Mode. 
//Find following like in wp-config.php and replace FALSE with TRUE

//FIND
define('WP_DEBUG', false);

//And replace with 
define('WP_DEBUG', true);

Upgrade PHP to 7.4 Or Greater

WordPress 5.6 even 4.xx recommend to use PHP 7.4 so i think this is the time you should upgrade your PHP version and this can be the solution of problem you are facing. If you don’t know which version is running contact your hosting company they can help you.

What are WordPress Requirements?

Since WordPress 5.6 WordPress have now started supporting PHP 8.0. But as PHP 8.0 have not been yet adopted by several hosting companies. That’s why WordPress still supports 7.2 , 7.3 and 7.4 as well. Here are WordPress official requirements as well.

WordPress recommend servers running version 7.4 or greater of PHP and MySQL version 5.6 OR MariaDB version 10.1 or greater.

Checkout the WordPress requirements, If you want to get a compatible WebfulHost provides awesome WordPress Hosting.

We also recommend either Apache or Nginx as the most robust options for running WordPress, but neither is required.

How to check your PHP version?

To check your current PHP version you can create a new file let’s say serverinfo.php. Now edit this file and add the following code in the file. After that run file it will give you all information about the system your server is running.

<?php
    phpinfo(); //PHP function to get php information

Upgrade your PHP version via .htaccess file. You can also learn how to upgrade PHP version via FTP or cPanel file manager. Mostly upgrading PHP version fix WordPress “there has been a critical error on your website” Error.

Is this issue related to a plugin?

As you are unable to access your WordPress admin area so please try to access your file manager in cPanel or access public_html directory via FTP.

Go to wp-content/ Directory them rename plugins/ directory to pluginsbackup/ now try to load your site. If this works that means you have problem with a plugin.

If problem is with plugin change back the directory name pluginsbackup/ to plugins/ Enter in plugin directory. Now rename each plugins directory by placing backup at end of that directory name.

Once you have changed all plugins directories names, start getting original directory names one by one and make sure you check the website if that’s still working after each plugin start working. As soon as you see which plugin is making problem just delete that plugin.

Checkout in details How To Deactivate WordPress Plugins When Not Able To Access Wp-Admin.

Troubleshoot your WordPress Theme

Just to make sure if issue is not WordPress theme again go to file manager in cPanel or public_html via FTP. Go to directory wp-content/ and there you can find themes/ directory.

Enter in themes directory and rename the theme which is active on your website. By adding backup on its directory name. Then see if wp-admin/ start working if that do so this means problem is with your Theme.

Otherwise rename your theme back to its original name and try something else problem is not with your theme.

If in condition problem is with theme and you are not theme author try to reach theme author ASAP they can help you to solve issue. If you are developer then follow steps below.

Check out different ways to troubleshoot WordPress themes. How To Deactivate WordPress Theme When Not Able To Access Wp-Admin.

WordPress core files are broken? Try to re-Install WordPress

As WordPress keep releasing new updates to their core files. Most of the security updates automatically update WordPress automatically. Or sometime an administrator hit the update to latest version button. Some WordPress installers like WordPress toolkit and softaculous WordPress also update WordPress automatically.

This is rare but its possible sometime the update couldn’t go smooth or the files downloaded into server went broken for some reason. In such cases if PHP files are broken or missing website would start producing. There has been a critical error on this website.

As the problem is now in Core WordPress so the only fix can be to re install the WordPress.

Your may check many possible ways. How to reinstall WordPress different ways. We are also listing the quick steps you can adopt to reinstall the WordPress via FTP.

• Access your website’s root folder via FTP client like FileZilla
• Delete everything except file wp-config.php
• Delete everything except directory wp-content/
• Download latest version of WordPress from wordpress.org
• Extract the downloaded zip file
• Upload everything to your website root except wp-content/ and wp-config.php

There has been a critical error on this website, On Multisite Network

In case you are running WordPress network instead of Single WordPress installation. Then you receive errors related to site in network for example. There has been a critical error on this website. And in case a theme on a specific website or a plugin have error that mentions like on this website instead of on this network.

You can turn on your website’s debug mode to know if this error caused by wrong update of WordPress. Sometime while WordPress auto update some files are missed cause of network or server response issue. Most of the time problem is related to a plugin of theme. The details can be known to fix by turning on the wp-debug mode through your wp-config.php file.

Final Thoughts

If you couldn’t solve the issue yet i recommend you to take a look to our another post. The site is experiencing technical difficulties. That can help you to solve There has been a critical error on your website also.

There has been a critical error on this website, is the error which is relate to PHP FATAL error. The reason WordPress do not show FATAL errors by PHP but replace them with message “There has been a critical error on this website”. Is just to provide you a layer of security, actually when PHP FATAL errors are produced they list the file names, and the numbers of code lines. Which makes it easy for hackers to track which file to attack and how to crack your website. To know more details about errors just turn on debug mode and get all details which plugin, theme or broken code is making problem.