"There has been a critical error on this website"

Your posts and pages are still saved. WordPress has usually emailed the site's admin address a special link to get back in and switch off whatever broke.

What you'll see

Visitors

There has been a critical error on this website. Learn more about troubleshooting WordPress.

You, on the login or admin pages

There has been a critical error on this website. Please check your site admin email inbox for instructions.

Older WordPress (5.2)

The site is experiencing technical difficulties.

A blank white page

The same kind of fault with no message, often called the "white screen of death". The steps below work for it too.

"Allowed memory size … exhausted"

The site ran out of the memory your hosting plan gives it. Your web host can raise the limit.

If you're visiting a site

The fault is on the website, not your phone or computer, and only the site's owner can fix it. Try again later, or contact the business by phone or email. If you were paying for something, check your email or bank before trying again, so you don't pay twice.

If it's your site

You only need your WordPress login and the inbox of the site's admin email address. Fix it the same day: until you do, every visitor sees the error.

1. Find the email with the subject [Your site's name] Your Site is Experiencing a Technical Issue. Check spam too. It goes to the Administration Email Address in Settings › General, which may not be your own address if someone else set the site up.
2. Read the line near the top. It often names the cause: "In this case, WordPress caught an error with one of your plugins" (or "with your theme"), followed by its name.
3. Click the link in the email and log in. You're now in recovery mode: you can use the dashboard, but visitors still see the error.
4. Go to Plugins. The one that broke says "This plugin failed to load properly and is paused during recovery mode", and there's a Paused list at the top. Click Deactivate under it. If the email named your theme instead, go to Appearance › Themes and switch to another theme for now.
5. Click Exit Recovery Mode in the black bar at the top, then open your site in a private (incognito) window to check it's back.
6. Leave that plugin off until there's an update for it, or ask its makers. If you need what it did (a shop, a booking form), tell your web person today.

The link lasts a day. If you miss it, WordPress sends a new one the next time the error happens after that.

If no email came

The email only goes to the admin address, at most once a day. If that address belongs to someone who has left, or your site can't send email at all, it never arrives.

1. Try logging in anyway at your site's address followed by /wp-admin/. Sometimes only the public pages break. If you get in, go to Plugins and deactivate the one you installed or updated most recently.
2. If you can't get in, ask your web person or web host to switch off all plugins. They do it from the hosting file manager by renaming the plugins folder, which keeps every plugin's settings. Then you log in and turn plugins back on one at a time until the error comes back: the last one you turned on is the cause.
3. Once you're back in, check Settings › General › Administration Email Address is an inbox someone reads. WordPress sends a confirmation email to a new address, and it only takes over once you click the link.

If it started after a PHP update

PHP is the programming language WordPress runs on, and hosts update it every year or two. An old plugin or theme that hasn't been updated in years can break on the new version. You can see your version under Tools › Site Health › Info › Server; WordPress recommends PHP 8.3 or newer. The lasting fix is to update or replace the old plugin or theme, not to stay on old PHP. Ask your host whether they can switch the old version back for a few days while you do that.

Find out sooner next time

Site Watch checks your home page once a night and emails you if it stops loading, so you hear about it from us rather than from a customer. It can't see the admin pages, and it won't catch a fault that only affects one inner page.