The theme doesn’t work. How to fix the most common errors?

Posted on by Martin

If you face any malfunction using our theme or an empty white page appears, the first thing you should do is turn on debug on your website.

You can do that in the default WordPress file wp-config.php, in the root folder of your WordPress installation.

  1. Edit file and locate line:
    define('WP_DEBUG', false);
  2. Replace line with set of codes which define constants to turn on debug and display errors on your screen:
    define('WP_DEBUG', true);
    define('WP_DEBUG_LOG', true);
    define('WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', true);
    @ini_set('display_errors',1);
  3. Save file and upload back to server modified file.
  4. Open your website and look if some error message appears.

Some of the common general errors which you might see

1. Fatal error: Allowed memory size of X bytes exhausted…

The very common error message that informs you have not allowed enough memory on your server for the website. According to Hosting Requirements, you should have allocated at least 96MB, but according to data on your website may be required more memory. The error message says the exact value of your allocated memory in bytes, you can use online tools to convert numbers in bytes to megabytes so you will know what is your current value.

Possible ways to increase memory limit on your server:

  1. increase memory limit in php.ini file on your server at line:
    memory_limit = 128M
  2. try to increase memory limit in wp-config.php file, add lines of codes:
    define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '128M');
    define('WP_MAX_MEMORY_LIMIT', '128M');
    96MB is only minimal requirement to run theme, your site might require more memory so try higher value for memory.
  3. if server doesn’t allow you modify this value via code so the problem still persists, contact your hosting provider with request to increase memory limit for your website. No all hosting companies allow user amend these values

2. Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_FUNCTION…

Make sure that your server parameters meet all the necessary requirements as described in Hosting Requirements.

In most cases, errors appear because of the old version of PHP installed on your server.

3. Call to undefined function mb_convert_encoding()

It looks like your PHP installation doesn’t have the Multibyte String extension installed which we recommend also in our Hosting Requirements.