The 7 most common WordPress problems for Norwegian businesses

1. Plugin conflicts

Two plugins that refuse to cooperate is the most common WordPress fault. The symptom: something stopped working without you touching that exact thing. It often follows an update — one plugin moved on, the other stayed behind.

2. Updates that break the site

Updates are necessary — outdated plugins are the most common way in for attackers. But an update can also break the site, especially when theme and plugins are updated in one batch without a backup first. The rule: backup before updating, and update in smaller batches.

3. "Critical error" and the white screen

"There has been a critical error on this website" — or just a white screen. It means the PHP code stopped, almost always because a plugin, a theme or a PHP version do not fit together. Which one is written in the error log, which your hosting provider can enable.

4. Login that stops working

A forgotten password is the easy variant. The hard one is when the login page itself fails — redirect loops, 403 errors, or a login URL moved by a security plugin nobody remembers. That is fixed in the database or the files, not in the browser.

5. Email that never arrives

The form "works", but the inquiries never show up. WordPress sends email without authentication by default, and such messages are often stopped at the receiving end. The fix is a proper SMTP setup with SPF and DKIM records on the domain — a one-time job with a lasting effect.

6. Signs the site may be compromised

Strange redirects, junk pages in Google results for your domain, browser warnings, unknown administrator users. One sign does not prove a break-in, but several together make it likely. A halfway cleanup helps little — the backdoor has to go too, or the problem returns.

7. Slow WooCommerce

Webshops turn slow for different reasons than ordinary pages: cart and checkout cannot be cached, and every plugin adds work to every page call. A slow checkout is the most expensive kind of slow — it is where the purchase happens.

How slow is the shop really? Measure it with a free website check instead of guessing.

What to do about it

The pattern across all seven: find the actual cause before fixing. Stacking workarounds — a plugin that "solves" the symptom — makes the next debugging session worse.

If you are stuck, submit a problem described in your own words. We reproduce the fault, find the cause and reply with a price before anything starts. For outages and slowness in general, start with Website down or slow? How to find the fault.