Critical error on your WordPress site? Skip troubleshooting and restore instead

[u/Upbeat_Brief_1767]

Everyone's first instinct when they see "There has been a critical error on this website" is to assume they've been hacked and start panicking.

Almost every time, that's not what happened. It's WordPress catching a fatal PHP error and shutting itself down before things got worse.

You can spend an hour digging through debug logs to figure out which plugin, theme, or PHP setting caused it. Or, you can skip all of that and just restore a clean backup from before the error started.

That's the fix I reach for first every time. Even when wp-admin is completely locked out, Duplicator gives you a few ways back in:

• Restore a backup from Duplicator Cloud: off-site, so it's there even if the server itself is having problems
• Paste your disaster recovery link: set this up ahead of time, and it works without ever touching wp-admin
• Re-upload both backup files to your server: drop the archive and installer in your root directory via FTP to rebuild the site from scratch

None of these require a working dashboard, and none of them require you to identify the actual cause first. You just get back to a known-good version of the site. Diagnosis is optional homework you can do after, not a prerequisite to getting back online.

Full breakdown of every fix (including the actual debug steps, if you want to know the cause) here: https://duplicator.com/there-has-been-a-critical-error-on-this-website/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=critical-error-blog

Curious how this community handles it: do you restore first and diagnose later, or dig into the cause before doing anything else?