 All right, well, welcome everyone to fighting your own demons how to deal with all your wordpress problems at once I will hand this off to our presenter today Kirsten Starcher, and I will stop sharing my screen Nice to meet you all Yes, I will be talking about how to fight all your own demons And solve all your wordpress problems all in one go So that's my lofty goal for the day here Um, who am I? I have been working on the web since there was a web for about, you know, 25 years And I've been working mainly in wordpress for well over 10 of those years I call myself a front-end developer mainly, but I like doing a lot of other things too Um, I obviously really enjoy professional photo shoots So this is not really a very technical talk. I'm not going to show you any code This is more about the mindset and the approach that's helped me for the last few decades And if you're running into the same sorts of problems again and again, or if you're new to it and it's all just sort of an Overwhelming mush, then this might help you. So this is going to be more of an advice column I'll go through some of the scenarios and the approaches that I keep in mind while I'm working on things And once we get through it all we can kind of make it more of a conversation So we're going to look at the different problems that can occur with wordpress sites and a strategy for troubleshooting each problem So You're part of a team setting up a new wordpress site for your business or your art or your dream Maybe you're the client. Maybe you're the developer or the designer Maybe you're tackling it all on your own So you've got all these great ideas and wordpress seems like a terrific way to bring them all to life Maybe your site is already up and running. Maybe it's still in progress but then Something's gone horribly wrong So here's a selection of some of the more common demons that you may find yourself battling Your site may be completely down. Uh, you might be getting a 500 error. There might be a critical error Uh, your site might just be doing something weird The code is buggy. Something isn't displaying the way that you want. You're getting a non-fatal error Your site has been hacked or defaced Your site is just slow And maybe the traffic is kind of disappointing Maybe you're working for a client who's really unhappy Maybe you're working with a co-worker colleague or a contractor who's just really frustrating and you can't get through to them So what are we gonna do? First of all, you're gonna stay calm And I'm gonna go into each of these in more detail in a moment You're gonna retrace your steps You look for the root of your conflict and then you start to troll shoot So let's break these down a little bit here So let's first deal with the feelings of panic and anxiety Whether you're dealing with a minor css glitch or a site that's completely broken or a confrontation with a colleague The same thing applies. Everything is going to go more smoothly if you're not freaking out And that's also going to help the people around you not freak out So remember it's not personal whatever's gone wrong. It's just a thing that's happening It's not happening to you. It's just happening Don't believe everything that you think Often we tile ourselves. Oh, how terrible this is and this is going to ruin your career or that other guy is totally incompetent Or everyone's gonna hate you or you've made a terrible mistake And these sorts of thoughts are just things that your brain is doing in response to stress signals It doesn't necessarily mean any of it's true. It's just your brain's way of kind of trying to Trying to help you process and it isn't always all that helpful in the moment so Once it once you're a bit calmer You can start looking into the issue So sometimes it's really obvious what caused a problem like maybe you just updated all your plugins and suddenly Your site is gone. So when it's not obvious what's happened You have to retrace your steps, you know a bit like looking for your lost keys kind of when did I have them last? So When do you last know that the site was working and what has happened since then? So have you made any changes recently? Did you maybe update the plugins last week and the problem is only actually visible now? Has somebody else who's working on the site possibly made changes Has something about the environment changed like server updates or a domain name that's failed to renew I mean there is also the possibility of a hack in which case you aren't the one who made the changes In this case your job is to find out what changed and how you're retracing and erasing someone else's steps Other than that the process is pretty much the same So troubleshooting is the process of investigating until you find out the root of your problem If you're dealing with a WordPress issue The conflict might be between bits of code or it might be a conflict between what it's doing and what you expect it to do If you're dealing with human conflict usually that means at least one person has a need that's not being met Often we get anxious messages from users or clients that just say I got an error or the site is down But that's not really all that useful You need to get complete error messages that are specific to what's going on and the exact behavior that leads to the problem So does the problem happen on every page of the site? Does it only happen when you do a certain thing? You want to narrow it down as much as you possibly can If it's someone else telling you about the problem make sure you can replicate the issue yourself Because it's very hard to troubleshoot a problem that you can't see When the pressure is on there is a temptation to jump in and do everything that you think might fix the issue all at once But then if the problem happens again, how will you know how to fix it the next time? It can also have the effect of introducing new problems So I consider a restore backup to be one thing so In a crisis that counts Also, I'm assuming that you have backups and a way of making regular backups and Because that's probably more important than many of my other tips There is nothing like the joy of realizing when something's gone horribly wrong that you can restore a backup It is it is it is such a relief If you think you're going to be experimenting with a lot of different changes You can take screenshots of your settings pages or make a note of what you're changing So you know what you started with and what you've tried already Here's an example of a nasty looking settings page where if you just go in and you know Change a few things you could completely boost track of what you change If you don't do that So if you're new to coding you've probably already discovered some of the things that can go wrong Everyone gets hung up on a mismatched parenthesis or an accidental missing semicolon once in a while If you're not running on a live site, you can turn on php errors so it'll tell you what line is breaking Bad logic means that your code is running But what you think you've asked it to do and what it's actually doing are different So you might be feeding the wrong variables to a function Or you might have put a critical statement in the wrong part of the process So you can leave yourself little breadcrumbs along the way to hone in on why are you going off crack You know display the value of those variables show everything that's going on Um and uh and just put those in at little regular regular intervals Um sometimes it's even something stupid like you're working in the wrong file without realizing it and you keep Making changes and refreshing it and it's just not happening happening And you're sure that your code is correct and it's still not working And then you realize you've been editing the wrong file all along and when you catch yourself doing this Go ahead and fix the problem and then step away from the screen and go for a nice walk outside because You've been staring at your computer for too long and you need to stop Now at this point programming languages are mostly still written by humans And so us humans need to be able to describe what's going on If you're not sure about your logic look at it and read out exactly what it's doing line by line As if it were Just a sentence I mean practically in English This isn't going to help you with something like a semicolon in the wrong place, but it might help your brain trace what's happening If you got a i to generate your code, it's actually even more important that you can follow what it's doing Because sometimes it's not right either So here we've got an example where you know, we've got a some instructions on how to clean the fridge and it's just You know, this isn't code. This isn't going to compile. This isn't going to run But if you look at the actual code that you've written and you sort of think of each line as an English statement or whatever your mental language is then Then you may have a better understanding of where something's going wrong where you might have given it the wrong instruction Now that's now that we have a few tactics for dealing with these demons Let's have a look at some of the situations that can come up while you're dealing with your website Your site is down Um, okay. So first there was that stay and calm Um, so we've got our little reminders in the corner of the screen here staying calming the first one. So First of all, are people actually in danger of dying Unless your WordPress site is running some kind of life support system And honestly, I don't think that's a thing anybody would run in WordPress Probably probably not probably nothing really really major is going to go horribly wrong in the world because your website is down Your client might think so because for the past 20 minutes, nobody has been able to buy their precious widgets And they're really upset because you know, they've lost 20 minutes of widget sales um And it's understandable. They you know, they are expecting a thing to be happening. That's not happening, but still You got to put this into a perspective. Okay. There's a problem, but it is not going to kill anyone So first you need to figure out what the Possible culprits are so you need to get a sense get familiar with what specific types of problems are most likely to appear at each level because there are different there's a different set of errors that are associated with you like your server or your host going down than there are with There being a bug in your theme If Chrome is telling you it can't find your site, you know domain name not resolved Then it's going to be a domain name issue You don't even have to think about your theme or your plugin because that is not the problem So as you get more experienced you you start to learn where is the first place to look But if you haven't found the culprit yet, what can you rule out? Can you prove that it's not the theme or it's not the plugin? Or if you you found out that it is in the theme code that you're working on How can you hone in on what bit of code is causing the problem? If you can't find the answer find everything that isn't the answer So that might mean you deactivate the plugin or you Switch to the default theme see if you still have the problem It might mean you comment out a big section of code to see if that's the problem Maybe something works on one page, but it doesn't work on another. So what is different about those pages? Do they have different? Are they using different templates? Do you have different short codes on them? Are you using different blocks? What is it about that page that you can say? Oh, that's different Yeah, what are plugin conflicts? It could be a plugin trying to Alter the same WordPress functionality as another plugin. It could be that they're using different versions of the same jQuery And and so they're conflicting with each other because one needs one version and one is expecting another it could be that a plugin is out of date and It conflicts with the latest WordPress or it's not up to WordPress standards So there's a lot of different reasons why you could be having problems with one plugin If you can't tell what plugin is causing the issue you can turn off each plugin one at a time and then Reload your site see if the problem disappears And sometimes that's not possible because the functionality that you need to test is an essential part of that plugin or sometimes the problem doesn't appear unless you have two plugins activated together So keep an eye out for that as well If you're getting a white screen of death and you can't get to the dashboard at all You can also temporarily turn a plugin off by renaming its folder using sftp or the command line I got to stop waving my hand so much zoom is thinking i'm giving a thumbs up, but I am Um So if your site is buggy It's pretty much the same approach as uh, if your site is down, but it's a little bit less alarming You're still going to try to break the problem down into smaller parts until you understand the root of the conflict So this could be something as simple as a form that won't submit That's often a problem with the javascript. That's validating the form So you could look where is the javascript coming from your theme or a plugin What message do you get in the javascript console? Can you track it down that way? If your site is slow Sometimes if it's just a temporary issue at your host and you ignore it for a little bit It'll go away. Sometimes it's something in between you and the host So if this is something that's just come up briefly, you know today Then it's it it often just resolves itself Um, if it's an ongoing thing it could be that you have too much traffic or that your host has Some sort of issue going on and then you might want to investigate the hosting I had a scenario once with the A host that was just notoriously slow and I ended up porting the site to another host Just to prove to the client who was absolutely convinced it was a problem with the site um And uh, I showed it to him on another host and it worked extremely fast there same site different host world of difference um It could be that uh You have a plugin or a theme that is bogging something down So again, you go through the same process deactivate switch things out and and test You know one thing at a time same approach Um, maybe you're not getting the sort of traffic that you want. Um, I don't know if anybody remembers this 90s 80s movie god, I don't even know a field of dreams. Um, they had there was this tagline If you build it they will come and you know, like he he decides to build this baseball field in his in his Horn field and then all these ghosts of famous baseball players come and it's all magical um But a lot of people approach their website like that with kind of an if you build that they will come mentality and Have no seo met a strategy no marketing plan um So in those cases, you're not going to get results Uh, you need to start applying your troubleshooting steps to your marketing strategy And you may need to get someone who knows how to do that properly. It's a whole different set of talents and skills and So you will need to work with them to make changes to figure out where to promote your site properly What tweaks need to be made? to You know just to boost that So now we can start to try to apply some of the same principles that we've talked about to dealing with conflict that we're having with other humans Um, now I gotta say this doesn't always work quite as reliably because humans unfortunately are more complex and nuanced than a WordPress site And sometimes two people just aren't a good fit and you can't always just swap them out like themes and plugins and that can be frustrating Um, but here's some thoughts on how to make the best of working together So over those steps again, what does this look like when you're dealing with a problem with people? so Stay calm Make sure in any scenario that you can be grounded and calm enough to be able to listen And hear what the other person is trying to tell you As well as being able to convey what you need to tell them In a reasonable and respectful manner If you don't think that you can do that without getting upset Let them know you're going to need a moment Find a better time to have the conversation when you're calm Do not go into it if if emotions are running high. It usually doesn't help Retrace your steps What is the context? What is actually happening? Does it even have anything to do with you? The root of your conflict don't assume that you know what's going on for them. It may be that the Problem the reason that they're upset with you it might it may be part of a bigger picture It might be that the last developer that they worked with bailed on them and failed to do something And they're they're anxious and worried because they think the same behavior is going to come from you It might be that they have something going on in their personal life That is that means they're at their threshold and they're having trouble with anything that is slightly difficult So look at what need they have that isn't being met right now And what need are you trying to meet? And just like in technical troubleshooting try to understand the situation before you start tinkering with it So if your client is panicking about a problem with the site Let them know you've heard them and you understand how important this is to them Give them a realistic time frame in which you expect the problem to be resolved and then stick to it If you guess wrong just keep updating them so they know you're on the case So if they're unhappy because of your communication time or style, are you taking a long time to respond? Are you giving them too much or too little information? Have you been clear on what you're going to be providing? Are they expecting something from you that You never agreed to deliver? Did you maybe over promise and under deliver because it really needs to be the other way around So maybe instead of a client you're dealing with a frustrating co-worker of some sort Um So some things to think about have you been moving the goalposts? One of the most frustrating situations for anyone building anything is when the parameters keep changing It's really disheartening to have to do work over and over again when you were proud of it the first time and have to redo it Or to have to change direction when you thought you had a clear picture of what was coming up Are you clear on what you're asking for from them? Make sure your project has very thorough and clear business requirements So the people working on the site know exactly what they're building or you might get unexpected results Have you been listening to what they're trying to tell you? If someone has been warning you that there's going to be problems or that they don't have the skills or enough time To do what you're asking and you don't take that to heart You will be surprised when the project doesn't turn out quite right Are you giving them space to work? Keeping track of progress is important, but if you get too involved you can actually interfere with that progress Set dates for check-ins in advance and don't hover let them do the job So setting expectations is best done right at the start of the relationship If you like to block out chunks of focus time while you're working and you don't want to be interrupted You don't want to be reached. Just let people know that's a thing that can happen I often tell that to my clients that I will only I will check emails at a certain point. I will check my phone messages at a certain point But if I need to focus all of that is off If you don't answer the phone, but you do answer emails, let them know That's the best way to reach you you know if you want to phone me then Just send me a note and we'll set up a time Um So yeah figure that figure that out figure out how you like to connect and let them know Some people some of your clients will be more phone people Some of your developers will be more email or text people and you might not have the same style But try to meet in the middle where you can Leave a little wiggle room when you're estimating time always give yourself a little extra just in case you run into trouble along the way People will always be thrilled if you come in under your estimate and they will be angry if you go over Put the odds in your favor Give yourself a little breathing room So also you don't have to be anxious if things run on a little later than you thought and you can stay calm Be realistic about what you can and you can't do If you think you're going to be likely to run into trouble in a particular part of the work Let people know so they aren't broadsided when you come back saying that you're going to need a few more hours or weeks Or have to buy this extra plugin to make it happen so Sometimes a person who's upset just needs to know that you heard them And it can be really hard to not immediately jump into explanations or defensives if you're feeling that you're under attack Reflecting back to them what you've heard from them in your own words can make a big difference If you get it right, you will actually feel them relax or their tone will change And they may be a little more willing to listen to your explanation So that might look something like i'm hearing that you're really worried about slow loading time Are you getting frustrated that the development site isn't looking exactly like the designs? Once they know that We're talking about the same thing Then they they will probably set back and and let you talk Yeah, maybe you're the one who's angry or concerned Um, you want to take more of a collaborative tone? Put things in terms of we instead of you and i or you need to do this Um, bringing it back to we helps reduce the sense of confrontation and it brings the focus back to The goal that we have in common Talking about how is this going to impact the project or how is this going to impact the budget? Like these are things that we you know, we we both want we want to see this succeed um Usually in nonviolent communication We learn ways of describing our emotional state to the person that we're having conflict with in a work scenario the person you're dealing with may not care how you feel and Sometimes getting into your emotions might not be appropriate So you you do need to approach it more from kind of the big picture being the the project the budget What your common interest is so that might sound like i i completely understand that seeing another round of revisions would really be helpful But we would have to delay the launch to fit that in and i know that launching on time is very important to you So you're addressing what you know matters to them Which is the launch and you're acknowledging their wish for you know, yet another round of revisions But just telling them that these are the consequences of that If you bring up a problem, but you don't make a request or a suggestion It kind of leaves the other person hanging and it looks a bit more like A confrontation that they have to resolve and they have to kind of guess at what you want So making a constructive suggestion is a good way to show them that you're interested in finding a solution It's it's better than just a no. It's a no, but here is a thing that we could do instead Um, if you're making a request Be prepared to hear and know and to adapt your own plan if what you are Asking for isn't optional. It's not a request Ultimatums can work to get the job done But they can also damage your relationship with the other person Nobody really wants to be in a situation where they feel that they are under threat um So that might look something like can we agree on a weekly meeting to check in on the site's progress rather than saying I need you to send me your update every thursday So I have a lot more resources here on Sort of the communication sides of things. Um, the um, the the Nonviolent communication approach was developed by a fellow named marshal Rosenberg And it's been used all over the world in all sorts of mediation In all sorts of scenarios and it's really great kind of at the individual relationship level There's a whole world of things to go into Um, one book that I really love on the topic is say what you mean by orange j. Sofer Which also takes sort of a mindfulness and somatic awareness Approach to it as well as giving you great tools for how to Have kind of how to look at how you're communicating Um, the third link here is also uh a It's about nonviolent communication in the workplace and um That yeah, it just has some some good ways of sort of bridging all of this And at this point I Be delighted to Invite any questions, uh, if you don't get to you this time Or if you have anything else that you'd like to chat about feel free to send me a note I'm going to be offering a separate online course Later this year about troubleshooting. I'm just developing it now Um, if you'd like to find out more about that, uh, feel free to sign up there And There we have it. I'll uh Hand it back to you Yeah, thanks kirsten. Um, yeah, I shared a link to the resources Uh, it includes what you just shared in the last slide plus more, uh So, um, check that link out for some more troubleshooting links Um, we actually did not have any questions that came up during your presentation. Um Which means I think it was very clear and very helpful. Um In the chat Martha says terrific presentation. So thank you. Um Just rolling back just to see you know folks, uh Just chatting chatting. Um Yeah, Ed says he likes the nonviolent communication approach It is totally life changing Absolutely, it's like I I kind of thought that I was a pretty good communicator and I started to notice little ways, you know, when I when I get upset about something some of my word choices that Could be improved on like not not even that I'm not like I'm swearing at people or something but Uh subtle ways that we have in our language. Um You know, even like saying I feel patronized is is Puts the accusation on the other person. You are patronizing me And it immediately sets you up for confrontation And as soon as you have that then the other person will get defensive and they don't listen So it's all about sort of how to de-escalate a situation so that you can both listen to each other and resolve things Oh, well, let's see. Well, well, if you have a client who makes the changes and then accuses you of making other changes They didn't ask for but you know, you didn't and this happens over and over again Uh, oh, yeah, um, that sounds like fun So there's a couple of things that you could do if I were in that situation. I would put a Logging plugin on the site And and then it would you would have a simple record that of this audit log and It would say who last saved the page and then you could just very calmly say Oh, okay. Um Yeah, no, I see that that page changed and uh, let me just have a quick look at the audit log Oh, yeah, it looks like a user Oh client name did it last, you know who that might have been And that's probably going to be the last, you know, and again be very non confrontational about it just But be prepared whatever you can do to track changes Um, that should help. Um a logging plugin There's one I think I've used one called WP audit log, but I'm not sure how granular it gets with the Changes Um, so you might want to dig around a little bit Um, okay question about troubleshooting form submissions. How long do you usually wait to assess if you notice no SEO? Uh, if I don't think I'm getting form submissions I jump on that pretty fast and I'll test it and like make any time that I make any changes to Forms or form plugins I'll make sure the form is still working because it's really horrible when you know two months go by and you realize that You your contact form hasn't been working and you don't know what you've lost um So I usually I usually jump on that pretty fast Um, sometimes it ends up being an smtp issue like the mail actually can't go out Um, so I try to use plugins where it also stores the submissions in the WordPress database So if you're using contact form seven, you use flamingo as well and then it saves it online If you're using gravity forms, it saves all the submissions for you So then you know if you're if your problem is with the Form You know the the functionality of the form or if it's with maybe if the problem is actually with the mail That's not getting sent to you. So that helps you narrow it down Turning on php errors that is it's not a plugin. It's something going to be in how your server or your host is configured. So It uh, it basically will show you all the errors It's a setting in your php config file and it'll show you all the errors There are other ways of seeing the errors like php will also give you an error log So depending on your setup and this is going to be, you know unique to Everybody you will look for that php error log and then you'll see where the errors and warnings are in there It takes a bit of digging, but it's essential The topic of more budget needed for paid plugins even with discovery Yeah, I give clients kind of a range of what to expect like we may need some plugins I think we're going to need this one and that one It's possible when we get to something else that we may need to buy another one And it gives again that sort of sense of wiggle room that they are now prepared for the possibility that there might be another, you know 20 to 100 dollar expense down the line Yeah, just in the discovery process being being a little broad about it and and And having that in your contract that any plugins are the responsibility of the clients and client and Maybe additional expenses just so they know so that's the main thing It's the setting expectations and up front this and this can happen How I uploaded a site to another host to test speed. Oh, all I did was clone it Like I just made a backup and restored the backup on the other host so that I had a cloned version of the site And then I could show the client like look, this is the exact same site on your host Test it out and then go to this other place where I've set it up and test it out the The weird thing in that scenario to be honest was that even after seeing the site load You know three times faster on the other host the client it had this he had this Very strong loyalty to his host which Um, and and he still he still wanted to stay with his existing host and Like okay, that's that's your call ultimately if somebody wants to make a a decision about their website and if it's not going to you know be a massive security problem and to hurt anybody then it's their call so But it was sort of a proof of concept at least and it made me feel better that I knew that it wasn't something I was doing wrong with his website so Sometimes that's the best you can do is put your own mind at ease Did I get everybody here? I think so So Yeah, and and you can find ways where Uh Rania says here, uh, some clients are always right and there is a certain element of that that you know, the customer is always right and and there is Like you you definitely don't want to get into a kind of budding head situation where you want to prove them wrong You can usually find a graceful way to be like That yeah, I can I can absolutely see why you'd why you would want to do that And I can understand coming from you know the situation that you just came from and also Here is this other way I I like sometimes to give Uh to give options you can you can stay with the way that you're doing this that would happen Uh, or there is also this other possibility and usually when you spell something out and you let them make the choice um Give them a little time and most clients will come around Not everybody. It's all part of the the joy Uh, I think that's all of the questions. I did have a question that that came up that is Not related to this this content and I was trying to find some information but You know one of our attendees is looking for information on how to get visitor information to your site Like something native to wordpress or even a course about how to add google analytics um And I am not finding anything specific on learn Right now, but um I'll just share in the chat A link to to learn if folks want to Look for more resources Um that are official to wordpress.org. Um, of course, there are plenty of other resources out there. Lots of other educators um within the wordpress community And Yeah, I'd say start there start at learn. Um, and then yeah, just Good old google searches or uh even on youtube. Um I imagine you can find something there There is a world of magic and good stuff at learned at wordpress.org So I am yeah, so Just the broad range of what you've got and uh the dedication. So thanks for Yeah, um I did have just a closing slide here just to Share a little bit more um Yeah, so like we mentioned learn wordpress is the Kind of official educational resources for the wordpress open source project But again, there are there's so much out there Um, lots of folks in the community donating their time and their knowledge to everyone else Um, if you want to keep in touch and like I mentioned earlier, um, we Accept folks that wants to volunteer to share their knowledge with the rest of the community via learn wordpress So, um, we have the making wordpress slack which is at chat.wordpress.org and you can join the training channel there Um, if you do social media things, um, I use mastodon and linkedin. Um, so if you want to get in touch there um And oh, I know that you shared your contact information before but I'll just go back to uh Kirsten's email there if folks wanted to note that as well um And yeah, that is it. It looks like, um I'm just double checking for any more questions at the minute last minute I think we're good. Um, so yeah Oh, you want the email up again? There we go Here, I'll give you a second to copy that. Um, really get a less clicky keyboard for these things Yeah Um, yeah, thank you everyone for being here today and thank you kirsten for Sharing and get another great Um presentation with us Thanks for having me. Yeah All right, we'll see you folks next time