In this post, we\u2019ll discuss what plugin compatibility means for your site. Then we\u2019ll talk about how to handle errors as soon as you notice them, and how to carry out a plugin check on WordPress to find incompatible plugin in the first place. Let\u2019s jump right in!<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n
Why plugin compatibility errors happen (and how they can affect your site)<\/h2>\n
There are many excellent plugins<\/a>, and most WordPress users will install<\/a> at least a few. In general, there\u2019s no problem with doing this. However, once in a while you may encounter a plugin compatibility issue. In other words, you might install two plugins on your site and find out they don\u2019t work well together.<\/p>\n There are a number of reasons this might happen. For instance:<\/p>\n It\u2019s worth noting that this issue isn\u2019t exclusive to plugins – you can also see compatibility issues arise between a plugin and your active theme or your version of WordPress.<\/p>\n What does a compatibility error look like? This question can be difficult to answer, since the specific problem you\u2019ll see will be based on the plugins involved. However, in general, these errors cause a specific feature on your site to function incorrectly or stop working<\/a>.<\/p>\n This feature may be inherent to the plugin causing the problem. Alternately, it might belong to another plugin, theme, or WordPress itself. In rare cases, incompatible plugins can even break your site \u2013 so this is an issue to take seriously.<\/p>\n If you think you may have a plugin compatibility problem on your site, don\u2019t panic. In most cases, it\u2019s easy to diagnose and deal with these errors. You can simply perform a plugin check, to see whether one of your plugins is actually causing the issue you\u2019re seeing.<\/p>\n The best way to do this is to disable your plugins, one at a time. We highly<\/em> recommend doing this on a staging site for safety reasons. So you\u2019ll want to start by creating a copy<\/a> of your live site first (if you don\u2019t already have one). Next, log in and navigate to the Plugins<\/em> tab in your dashboard:<\/p>\n Here, you\u2019ll see a list of all the plugins installed on your site. Under each one, you\u2019ll see an option labeled Deactivate<\/em>. The following process will help you carry out a plugin check for compatibility errors:<\/p>\n Once you\u2019ve figured out which plugin is giving you trouble, you have a few options. You can try uninstalling and reinstalling it, and see if that resolves the issue. If it doesn’t, you\u2019ll either need to contact the developer for help fixing the error, or find a replacement plugin<\/a> that does the same thing (more on this in the next section).<\/p>\n Finally, it is<\/em> possible for a plugin compatibility error to prevent you from logging in to your site at all. In this scenario, you can still carry out a plugin check. You’ll just need to use File Transfer Protocol (FTP) to access your site\u2019s files directly. You can find more details on how to do this in our article on the subject<\/a>.<\/p>\n While the manual process above is simple, it can still take some time to manually deactivate all of your plugins, especially if you’re using a lot of plugins. To automate the process, you can try the free Plugin Detective plugin:<\/p>\n\n
How to diagnose a potential plugin compatibility error<\/h2>\n
![\"How](\"https:\/\/mllj2j8xvfl0.i.optimole.com\/cb:c5QE.37290\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/f:best\/https:\/\/themeisle.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/plugins-list-dashboard.png\")
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Automate your WordPress plugin check<\/h3>\n
![\"Plugin](\"https:\/\/ps.w.org\/plugin-detective\/assets\/banner-772x250.png?rev=2865909\")
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