Did you ever find yourself in a dead end when trying to diagnose an issue? Sure, our support section will help you out, either by reading the documentation, watching our tutorial videos or simply contacting our support staff.
But sometimes, you might feel a little techy and want to preliminarily diagnose the issue yourself. There are a few simple steps that you can try. Let’s check them out.
Theme features stop working correctly
Sometimes, you might’ve gone onto your website and noticed that some features are not working correctly. Maybe the mobile menu won’t open, or maybe there’s a display error. There are a few steps to self-diagnose this and find out where the issue might be coming from.
Updating your software
This shouldn’t even be mentioned, but the first and most important step of self-diagnosing an issue is to make sure that all the software that’s running your WordPress website is up to date. This includes the main WordPress install, the theme and its plugins and any other third party plugin that you might’ve added.
Updating your software makes sure that you have the latest features available, the latest security patches as well as any other bug-fixes that might be integrated into an update. It goes a long way in solving issues usually and updating the software can be done in a few clicks right from your WordPress dashboard.
Incorrectly configured optimisation (caching) plugins
Caching plugins are great. They offer a lot of options that help speed up a website and can help out with visitor retention on your website, as a fast loading site feels pleasant to navigate.
But the story doesn’t end here. An optimisation plugin must be correctly configured in order to take full advantage of what it has to offer. Not all options can do good in a certain situation and each option must be analysed against your current setup to see if it’s good for it. There’s an interesting article you might want to read here – https://creativethemes.com/blocksy/docs/troubleshooting/the-case-of-over-optimising-your-website/ – which explains the do’s and don’ts of optimising a website.
In any case, to quickly self-diagnose this you would be required to temporarily deactivate all optimisation plugins or services from the site. If the issue is resolved, you will need to go back to the drawing board and adjust your optimisation settings accordingly.
Plugin not working properly
Plugins are great. They add additional functionality to your WordPress website with a simple install. They’re also easy to manage and configure – what’s not to like about them?
Though, in some cases, you might find that there’s an incompatibility between your chosen plugin and your current setup running Blocksy – especially if the plugin has not been developed in accordance to the WordPress developer guidelines. In this case, there’s an easy step to quickly rule out if Blocksy is causing this incompatibility, or if the problem is with the plugin itself.
General purpose plugins
In case there’s a plugin that adds functionality to the core WordPress software, the first step that you can take in self-diagnosing is to temporarily switch to one of the default, 202x series themes. The best ones for testing are the recent ones –
- Classic 202x theme – Twenty Twenty-One
- Block-based 202x theme – Twenty Twenty-Two or Twenty Twenty-Three
By switching to one of these themes, you will be sure that any alleged incompatibilities coming from the initial chosen theme are taken out the equation, as the 202x series has been created by the core WordPress developers.
If the plugin still continues to act badly on one of the 202x series themes, then you will need to contact the author of the plugin for more resources.
If the plugin does work correctly in the end with one of the 202x series themes, then feel free to reach out via our support centre and our engineers will help you out in a matter of a few hours.
WooCommerce based plugin
In case that the third party plugin is related to any kind of WooCommerce functionality, it would be best to test the integration on the WooCommerce default theme – Storefront.
Again, this theme has been created specifically as a developer guideline so that other developers can integrate their third party services with WooCommerce, with no interference coming from the theme chosen.
If the plugin still behaves badly with the default Storefront theme, then it will be required to get in touch with the plugin author.