Not all errors come from WordPress for Cowork — sometimes the site itself is broken. Common WordPress-level issues and quick fixes.
White screen of death
Page loads to a blank white screen. Usually a PHP fatal in a plugin or theme.
- Ask Claude: “Show me my PHP error log for the last 30 minutes.” The error line points at the broken plugin/theme.
- Deactivate that plugin (Claude can do this remotely) or temporarily switch to a default theme.
- If WordPress is completely inaccessible, rename the plugin folder via SFTP — WordPress auto-deactivates plugins it can’t find.
Error establishing a database connection
WordPress can’t reach MySQL. Restart MySQL (managed hosts have a button; self-hosted: sudo systemctl restart mysql). Check wp-config.php for the right DB credentials.
“This site has been temporarily disabled” / Coming Soon
A coming-soon or maintenance-mode plugin is intercepting visitors. Common culprits: SeedProd, Coming Soon Page & Maintenance Mode by NiteoThemes. Deactivate or configure the plugin to allow your IP.
500 Internal Server Error on specific routes only
If /wp-admin/ works but /wp-json/ 500s, the problem is REST-specific. Common cause: a security plugin’s REST hook misbehaving. Deactivate security plugins one at a time to find the culprit.
Pages 404 after a permalink change
Flush rewrite rules. Easiest: visit Settings → Permalinks and click Save (no changes needed). Or ask Claude: “Flush rewrite rules.”
Images broken after migration
URLs in post content still point at the old domain. Ask Claude: “Search and replace ‘old-domain.com’ with ‘new-domain.com’ across all posts and pages, dry-run first.”
Pages return the wrong content
Cache. See cache invalidation.
WordPress is asking for FTP credentials on plugin update
The web server doesn’t have write permission on wp-content/. Fix file ownership: chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/yoursite/wp-content/ on most hosts, or contact your host.
Comments stopped working
Either an anti-spam plugin is blocking, or discussion settings changed. Ask Claude: “Send me a snapshot of my discussion settings and any active anti-spam plugins.”