WooCommerce is a great software solution for your WordPress website, as it offers a variety of ecommerce features for free. Occasionally you might run into issues that'll require help from your website host. Below we’ve summarized the most common errors that you might encounter.
If you come across any of these errors, try our suggestions or contact your website hosting provider. Printful, unfortunately, won’t be able to help with troubleshooting or solving these issues.
Most common WordPress & WooCommerce errors
- 500 Internal Server Error
- 404 Error
- Error Establishing a Database Connection
- Connection timed out
- Maximum execution time of 300 seconds exceeded
- PHP Fatal error: Out of memory
- Invalid response from your WooCommerce store (status code 403)
Steps to take when any of these errors show up:
1. Refresh your page
In some cases, reloading the page can fix the issue. The servers can get overloaded and refreshing the page might help.
2. Plugin audit
- Check if the plugins used on your website are up to date and don’t need updating.
- Try deactivating plugins one by one to see if that resolves the issue.
3. Theme audit
Theme compatibility with plugins can cause 500 errors. To check if the WordPress theme is the reason for the error, go to the WordPress dashboard > Appearance > Themes, change the theme, and see if that fixes the error.
1. 500 Internal Server Error
The HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) 500 Internal Server Error means that the server encountered an unexpected problem that prevented it from fulfilling the request. The WordPress 500 internal error is an issue on the application side and mostly occurs on the server level.
What caused it?
500 Internal Server Error doesn’t specify the cause of the issue. So it’s not possible to determine the exact reason without looking into server error logs.
Most of the time, it’s caused by plugin/theme issues, corrupted .htaccess files, database, caching issues, hosting issues, or due to a PHP memory limit.
How to troubleshoot it?
The root cause of this error is on the server side. More insights about the issue can be found in the PHP error log file on the server.
As the 500 internal server error on WordPress occurs for various reasons, the solution is based on what caused the issue.
- Check PHP error logs
To find the reason for the 500 error, look at the PHP error log. - Outdated PHP version
If your WordPress site is running on an outdated PHP version, update it to a newer one or contact your hosting provider for help. - Increase PHP memory
This is a temporary solution, but you can try to increase the memory available for PHP processes. If you don’t know how to do it, contact your hosting provider.
When contacting the hosting provider, always explain the issue in detail—when did the error occur, did it work before, and whether anything has recently changed on the website.
2. 404 error
This error means that the server was unable to find the requested page. In most cases, this error is caused by broken links and changed URLs.
For pages using Apache solutions, the most likely cause is the .htaccess file. This file also handles your site’s hyperlink structure, and it’s possible it’s redirecting your URLs incorrectly.
3. Error Establishing a Database Connection
This error pops up when the WordPress site isn’t able to access your site's database. Your site’s database is where all its content is stored. This includes your posts, pages, and user information. If it can’t access the database, your site won’t be able to function at all.
The most common cause for this issue is a single file, named wp-config.php, on your site. This file contains all the information about your site’s database, so it’s the most likely origin of this issue.
How to troubleshoot it?
The first step is to check the hostname, username, password, and/or database name values in the wp-config.php file and compare them with the values provided by the hosting provider. For your website to connect to the database, these values have to match.
If you can’t resolve the error, contact your hosting provider, explain what has happened in detail, and ask them to troubleshoot the issue.
4. Connection timed out error
There could be multiple reasons for these errors. It means that Printful wasn’t able to establish a connection to your website in a timely manner.
The most common reason is that your site doesn’t have the resources it needs to function properly.
For example, if you’re using shared hosting, another site could be taking up your server’s resources or your site has exceeded its maximum allowed bandwidth. If this is the case, you may want to upgrade your hosting.
How to troubleshoot it?
Contactyour hosting provider, explain the issue, and together with the hosting provider decide if you need to upgrade your hosting plan, optimize your website, or increase your PHP memory limit.
5. Maximum execution time of 300 seconds exceeded
This issue occurs when PHP code in WordPress takes too long to run and reaches the maximum time limit set by your hosting provider.
Printful can’t help you solve this issue, as it can only be fixed on the hosting side.
How to troubleshoot it?
The solution depends on the root cause of the problem. The best course of action is to contact your hosting provider and find the root cause of the problem to resolve it. You can also ask the hosting provider to increase the PHP max execution time for your website, depending on the configuration of the server.
6. PHP Fatal error: Out of memory
This error shows up when there isn’t enough PHP memory available on your server. The first course of action is to increase your memory limit. This can only be done by your hosting provider.
How to troubleshoot it?
Please contact your website hosting provider and ask to increase the PHP memory for your WordPress website.
7. Invalid response from your WooCommerce store (status code 403)
This error may be caused by a misconfiguration of your WordPress server (status code 403). 403 means that your web server is refusing access to certain URLs.
How to troubleshoot it?
Check if your server allows access to the following endpoints and all subdirectories:
- /wc-api/
- /wp-json/wc/
Other possible causes:
- The server configuration is stripping off Basic Authentication Headers.
- One of the installed plugins modifies the standard WordPress/WooCommerce API authentication.
- The PHP-FPM module is causing authentication issues.
How to troubleshoot it?
There can be multiple reasons for this error, but most of them are happening on the server side.
The first step is to check the server access logs that contain information about the 403 requests. If you don’t know how to do it or can’t access server logs, contact your hosting provider, explain the issue in detail, and ask them to troubleshoot the issue.
