WordPress Repair
Site down, white screen, locked out of your own dashboard. Whatever has happened, it is almost always fixable and usually faster than you think.
I have worked on WordPress since 2010. Most of what breaks a site breaks in a handful of predictable ways, so the job is rarely a mystery. It is a process of elimination done in the right order.
Does This Sound Familiar
- White screen of death – nothing loads, no error, just blank
- “There has been a critical error on this website”
- “Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance” that never goes away
- Locked out of wp-admin or the login page loops back on itself
- 500 or 503 errors
- Site fine on the front but the dashboard is broken or the other way round
- Everything worked until an update ran
- Redirecting to a site you have never heard of, which usually means hacked
What I Actually Do
Take a backup first
Files and database, before anything else happens. It costs a few minutes and it means there is always a way back if something unexpected turns up mid-repair.
Read the error rather than guess at it
A white screen is PHP failing silently. Turning on error logging usually names the exact plugin and line that caused it within a minute. Most people never see that because WordPress hides it by default. Server error logs often have the answer sitting there already.
Isolate a plugin conflict without the dashboard
If you cannot log in, plugins can still be disabled over SFTP or the command line by renaming folders, then brought back one at a time until the culprit shows itself. Locked out is not the obstacle people assume it is.
Check the things that break silently
Out of memory, a PHP version the theme cannot cope with, a corrupted .htaccess, a database table that has crashed, a partial update that timed out halfway. These produce the same blank screen and get misdiagnosed constantly.
Fix the cause, then tell you what it was
You get a plain explanation of what went wrong and what stops it happening again. Not jargon and not silence.
What It Costs
- Businesses – £150 per hour, one hour minimum
- Private individuals – £120 per hour, one hour minimum
- After the first hour, charged in half hours
Most repairs are done inside the first hour. If I can see straight away that it is a bigger job, you get told before the clock runs on, not after.
If I cannot fix it, you pay half the time spent. Diagnosing a fault is real work whether or not it ends in a repair, but you should not carry the full cost of an outcome you did not want.
How Quickly
Same day in most cases, subject to what is already booked. If your site is down and costing you money, say so in the first line of your message. Those go to the top of the list and I can usually tell you quickly whether it is an easy one.
What I Need To Get Started
- Your website address
- WordPress admin login or hosting login if you are locked out
- A sentence on what happened and roughly when it started
- Anything you changed just before it broke, including updates
That last one matters more than anything else. “It broke after I updated a plugin on Tuesday” saves a good half hour of hunting.
Hacked Sites
If your site is redirecting elsewhere, showing content you did not write or your host has suspended it, that is a clean-up rather than a repair. It means finding the entry point as well as removing the damage, because a site cleaned without closing the hole is simply reinfected. Tell me when you get in touch and I will be straight with you about what is involved.
Who I Work With
Private customers and small to medium sized businesses. That is the work I am set up for and the work I am good at.
I do not take on corporate contracts. Development teams, sign-off processes and layers of project management are a different job to this one. If that is what you need, I am not the right person and I would rather tell you now than find out halfway through.
Get It Fixed
Use the contact form and tell me what the site is doing. If it is urgent, say so in the first line.