Mixed Content Warning
If you’re forcing HTTPS on your site, but you keep getting "Mixed Content Warnings" or other errors instead of a secure connection, you may be worried that SSL isn’t working.
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Rest assured, it is. This warning is usually caused by content on your site, often images that are being served over HTTP instead of HTTPS, or hardcoded references to files that use http://. You can read more about what could cause the warning on the Mozilla Developers Documentation. The quickest way to find out what content is insecure is to launch the Web Console (Press F12 to launch it on both Firefox and Chrome) and see what is throwing warnings or errors.
Now that you know what is causing the issue, you can try re-uploading or re-inserting images and files, fixing links, and so on. Or, you can take advantage of the number of WordPress plugins that will help you fix mixed content warnings.
White Screen of Death
If your WordPress site is suddenly nothing more than a white screen, it can mean any number of problems. The quickest solution would be to roll back to the most recent backup of your site, and avoid doing whatever caused the white screen but that isn’t an option every time.
First, check the PHP version your site is running. Sometimes there incompatibility between a theme or plugin, and the version of PHP you’re running. In some cases you may need to bring the version up, and in some cases you might need to roll it back to an older version.
If it’s not PHP, try disabling all of your plugins one by one to see if they’re the cause. Because your site is down, you’ll have to do this manually. Log in to your cPanel, and click File Manager.
From here, navigate to the location of your WordPress install, and find the Plugins directory under wp-content.
Then right click and hit Rename on each folder, one by one. Simply adding _old to the end of the directory name will be enough to disable it. Keep checking your site after each plugin you disable to see if that’s the one causing the issue. Keep in mind, that your browser may have stored an outdated version of the site in its cache, so you may want to refresh your browser cache or check the site using Private Browsing/Incognito Mode. Also, be sure to re-name the directory before reactivating the plugin!
If that doesn’t work, it may be a theme issue. Go ahead and open up phpMyAdmin on your cPanel account.
Then just find the wp_options table in the WordPress install’s database. If there’s only one WordPress installation, it will be obvious. But if there are multiple, you may need to look around, or just check the details of the install under My Apps.
Down the table you should find template and stylesheet, which control what theme is used. This table will have a ton of other useful options as well, but you may need to increase rows per page and whatnot to see them all. Just set template and stylesheet to one of the default themes, like twentynineteen.
If your site is still down after all this, feel free to reach out to support@reclaimhosting.com, and we’ll be happy to take a look.
WordPress Hardening
Websites get hacked, and that’s just how it is sometimes. We offer some information on how to recover afterwards, but the best measure is to prevent it in the first place. Here is a (by no means full) checklist on how to keep your WordPress site secure.
- Force HTTPS on your site in order to secure the traffic between your site and it’s visitors.
- When uploading content via FTP to your site, always use SFTP instead of regular FTP.
- Use strong usernames and passwords for your WordPress installation.
- Keep your themes, plugins, PHP version, and even WordPress itself up to date.
- Make sure Automatic Backups are on in the WordPress installation’s settings in Installatron.
- Think about using a security focused plugin, like Wordfence.
Copying Installations
You can use the Duplicator Plugin to copy installations between servers yourself. Reclaim Hosting also offers professional Migration Assistance services at $25 per site. If you’re looking to just move your WordPress installation from one of your domains to another (on the same account), you can use the Cloning Feature of Installatron.