How Do You Resolve A WordPress Plugin Battle?

One of many scariest issues that may happen with a WordPress person is that you simply set up a plugin, and upon activation, you get a white display screen of demise.

This display screen, the place your superbly crafted web site as soon as lived, is now plain white or produces a line or two of unformatted textual content.

A plugin battle is when you’ve gotten two plugins put in, and whereas they each work nice, operating them collectively breaks the positioning.

It often occurs when plugins run in tandem, they usually each come packaged with the identical or related library features. There’s a naming battle, and PHP produces an error.

This text will focus on the best way to repair them.

Plugin Conflicts Are Changing into Extra Uncommon

To start with, plugin battle: the place anyone installs a plugin that conflicts with one other plugin, is changing into extra uncommon.

WordPress, in the previous few years, has launched protections in place meaning if an error does happen, relatively than activate the plugin absolutely, it’ll backtrack routinely, present an error, and go away the plugin deactivated.

For almost all of customers, that is what they see.

The plugin “Damaged Plugin” is unable to be activated inside WordPress because it generates a deadly error. (Picture from creator, March 2025)

At this level, an investigation needs to be carried out in a staging atmosphere with this plugin, however until it’s a novel plugin, another could must be discovered that doesn’t battle together with your setup.

Plugin conflicts are likely to happen once you set up a Should Use (MU) plugin by way of a service like FTP, an replace to a number of plugins takes place, or you’ve gotten a customized plugin activated and modifications are pushed to the server.

I’ll stroll you thru my means of resolving plugin conflicts.

Do You Have Entry To WordPress?

To start, the primary query you need to ask is when you’ve got entry to WordPress.

In case you do, typical knowledge dictates that the plan of action to take is to deactivate all plugins and swap to a default theme, to attempt to troubleshoot the place the issue happens.

If you’re doing this on a dwell website, this isn’t splendid, as the positioning should have quite a lot of performance.

A special method is to put in the Well being Test and Troubleshooting plugin. Putting in this plugin would will let you run a model of the positioning with a default theme, and no plugins put in.

Merely activate every plugin in flip till you establish the one that’s inflicting the difficulty after which go away that one deactivated.

Be sure the theme is the very last thing activated, as customized themes might use performance in plugins that might convey down the positioning.

If You Don’t Have Entry To WordPress

In case you don’t have entry to WordPress, then there might be a little bit of a course of as a way to diagnose and repair the issue.

This method is what I take as finest as I can when diagnosing plugin conflicts. It may be carried out in any order, relying in your information and what you’ve gotten entry to.

Have Entry To The Administrative Electronic mail? You Might Get An Electronic mail

If in case you have entry to the administrator electronic mail with WordPress (set in Settings > Basic), it’s possible you’ll obtain an electronic mail.

It will will let you put the positioning into Restoration Mode. From there, you’ll be able to log in, and it’ll establish the plugin that has the difficulty, and you may deactivate it.

WordPress restoration mode with the plugin battle highlighting Howdy Dolly, as the place the battle lies. (Picture from creator, March 2025)

Test The Hosts’ Log File

Step one can be to verify the host’s log file.

Relying on the host, it might be simply seen in your host’s dashboard or from inside cPanel, however in the event you solely have a file browser, they are typically put exterior of the /public_html/ or /www/ (that are publicly obtainable). Often, one stage up in a file known as /logs/ tends to be the place it’s positioned.

Do you have to discover the file (it ought to have a reputation like error_log), obtain it and seek for any Deadly Error inside the doc, possibly in the direction of the underside.

Inside the error message, you need to have a few file areas that may dictate the place the file points happen.

No Logs? You Might Want To Activate Them

If in case you have FTP/SFTP entry to the positioning however no logs, it’s possible you’ll have to activate them.

Inside the root listing of WordPress, add the next traces to the wp-config.php file.

outline( 'WP_DEBUG', true );
outline( 'WP_DEBUG_LOG', true );
outline( 'WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', false );
@ini_set( 'display_errors', 0 );

It will create a file debug.log inside the wp-content/ folder. From there, you’ll be able to see the errors on this file.

Safety Tip: The debug.log will probably be publicly seen, so when you’ve fastened the difficulty, take away these traces from wp-config.php and delete the debug.log file.

Resolving These Plugin Conflicts

Whichever technique you employ, your logs ought to produce traces like this under:-

Deadly error: Can't redeclare hello_dolly_get_lyric() (beforehand declared in/wp-content/plugins/broken-plugin/index.php:17) in /wp-content/plugins/hello-dolly/hey.php on line 46

Every factor means:

• “Deadly Error” determines the error. A deadly error in PHP implies that the positioning instantly stops working. You may get different errors or warnings.
• “Can’t redeclare hello_dolly_get_lyric()” is the deadly error. On this case, there are two PHP features with the identical identify (hello_dolly_get_lyric()). That is the premise of the plugin battle.
• “/wp-content/plugins/hello-dolly/hey.php on line 46” tells you the place this error happens. Whereas the road quantity isn’t necessary (until you’re coding your self), it does inform you the plugin the place the plugin error happens – on this case, “hello-dolly”.

The following step is to manually change the plugin.

In your chosen FTP programme or file supervisor, go to the plugin folder inside WordPress – /wp-content/plugins/ on this case – and rename the plugin folder (on this case, change “hello-dolly” to “broken-hello-dolly”). It will deactivate the plugin once you subsequent log into WordPress.

The plugin “Howdy Dolly” has been deactivated as a consequence of it not current. In actuality, it’s been renamed so WordPress can’t discover it. (Picture from creator, March 2025)

It’s a good suggestion to not delete the WordPress plugin in the event you can stop it. It will power the deactivation of the plugin in query.

From there, you’ll be able to examine the 2 plugins and establish why the 2 features are known as twice.

For Builders: Good Follow Can Stop Plugin Conflicts

If you’re a developer constructing WordPress websites, following good observe can stop plugin conflicts.

Listed below are some suggestions for stopping your plugin or WordPress websites from having plugin conflicts with different plugins on the market:

1. If you’re not utilizing PHP Namespaces, then I’d suggest naming your lessons or features with a prefix. One thing like plugin_name_function_name can stop related performance from having the identical perform identify. Attempt to make them distinctive (so don’t use wp_ as a prefix).
2. Utilizing function_exists round your features to forestall your features from loading in the event that they exist already.
3. If you’re importing performance, utilizing class_exists can verify to see if the category has already been loaded.
4. Loading your performance late, so naming your plugin folder with a late alphabet letter is helpful. Not each developer follows the identical method as you!
5. If you’re constructing on one website, be sure that your server setup is identical (or as near being the identical) because the dwell atmosphere.

You’re by no means going to fully assure your plugin or theme doesn’t battle with the hundreds of thousands of plugins that exist within the WordPress area.

Nonetheless, by following the above steps, you’ll be able to decrease battle as a lot as potential, and easy modifications to your code writing can stop a world of debugging hell later.

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Featured Picture: Whiskerz/Shutterstock