Insecure plugins in WordPress cause problems

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How can a plugin become insecure?

  1. When it hasn’t been updated by the developer for more than 2 years.
    bijwerken plugin
  2. If the developer doesn’t have proper training and simply copies code from the internet to create a plugin.
  3. If input fields and search fields are not properly protected against injections.

The problems caused by insecure plugins

As mentioned in point 3, insecure plugins can be used to perform database injections. The database contains all your pages, news posts, and yes: the users and administrators of your website.
If there is access to the database, anything is possible, and the website is completely in the hands of the hacker.
Not only that, but the injections and modifications are done automatically by computers. Rapidly and with thousands of websites per day.

An insecure plugin is a ticking time bomb for your website.

How can you check if a plugin is secure?

  1. The website WPvulndb.com collects information about many plugins that have been known to have vulnerabilities. Check if your plugin is listed there.
  2. Check if your website has been injected using the Sucuri Malware Scanner.
  3. Use WPscan on Linux. This is quite complex, but if you have a highly important website, it is a step you should take to ensure security.

Finally

Try to use as few plugins as possible. Every plugin is a potential door for hackers and scripts that are eager to place links to their own website on yours.

 

 

What Google itself says about a website being hacked and displaying advertising

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What Google itself says about a website that has been hacked and shows advertisements.

  1. Your site has been demoted in Google’s search results
  2. Visitors are warned when they find you in Google

IN SHORT: Prevent your website from being injected with advertising

The so-called injections via a script are done via:
a. Outdated plugins where a leak has been found
b. Outdated WordPress version
c. Outdated Themes
d. Nulled plugins/themes (Illegal downloaded premiums)
e. Easy to guess passwords
f. A lack of restrictions…. and I can go on like this until Z..

The websites that we see often have 1 of the above combinations.

Below is the official message from the Developer Tools

Google’s Safe Browsing systems have detected that some pages on your site may be hacked or contain third-party resources such as ads designed to trick users into installing malicious software or handing over sensitive information. To protect your site’s visitors, your site has been demoted in Google’s search results and browsers such as Google Chrome now display a warning when users visit your site.

When do you have too many plugins?

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To immediately piss off many website builders: 30+ plugins is too much.

Of course the customer has wishes,
The website must be a fast Ferrari with the loading space of a truck and the seating comfort of a train.

How many plugins is common?

10 to 20, maximum!
Rather 10 than 20.

Why limit the number of plugins?

Each plugin loads a piece of code, making the website a bit slower.
Then we are not even talking about plugins that are of lesser quality, which can slow down your website by seconds.

Gosh, what’s a second

If your website loads within 4-5 seconds, it’s no problem. But each plugin adds 0.1 to 0.3 seconds.
If you have 30 plugins on and your website takes 8-12 seconds to load, the visitors will drop out.
Google will also give your website a lower ranking in Google.

How do I limit the number of plugins?

  1. Custom – don’t use a plugin for every function.
  2. Avoid duplicate plugins – Yoast SEO is good, your site will not be found better with 3 seo plugins.
  3. Think in advance what your website should be able to do – then the programmer can take that into account

Security

In addition to the speed of the website, security is also hard to find with 30+ plugins.
Why?

Plugins leak every week, hackers find ways to take over your website or fill it with advertising.
Check out this website: https://wpvulndb.com/plugins

I want a fast website and a secure website – but also lots of features!

The speed of your website
Then take a good hosting package, such as a VPS (Virtual Private Server), DDS (Dedicated) with SSD (Solid State Drive) and sufficient ram memory. (Don’t forget the CPU, but with a dds that is often fine)
Technical story, just ask the web host.

The security of your website
Let your website secure and manage. We check whether the plugins are still safe, keep them up-to-date and keep an eye on your website. The blacklists, speed and more!

A good programmer
A good programmer knows what he is doing and how to keep your website fast. If you want an extensive website with many functions, a good programmer is indispensable!

Are premium / pro plugins more secure than the free version?

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It shouldn’t matter if you use a premium or free version of a plugin. The free version should also be safe! That is the responsibility of the plugin builder.

That’s how we think about it.

But…

Unfortunately, we have come across several examples that show that a premium / pro plugin is updated sooner in the event of a leak than the free version.

Various plugins have vulnerabilities not fixed for months in the free version!!

Some examples where the premium / pro version is more secure than the free version:

WordFence Security

WordFence is a plugin that protects your WordPress website. And yes, the free version is pretty safe and up-to-date as well.
But..

they update the free version once a month

As they say themselves “every thirty days“.

The premium / pro version you get paid for live updates. So immediately when it is needed. Both the files and the firewall that prevent hacks are kept up-to-date live.

iThemesSecurity

Also a plugin with which you secure WordPress. iThemes Security gives the paid version much more attention than the free version. A security update is implemented quite smoothly in the premium version but..

sometimes an exploit hangs for weeks to months in the free version

Various other plugins

There are many examples of plugins where leaks occur that the plugin builders get reported.
The patch (fix against the hack) will then be implemented in the premium / pro version after 5-10 days, but the free version will be left behind.

Sometimes a leak remains in the plugin for months after a leak is known and it even disappears from the WordPress plugins database

The good news

When free plugins are on WordPress.org, they will be removed until the leak is fixed.
There are several parties that report leaks to WordPress and there is a zero tolerance policy regarding leaky plugins.

A leak / exploit, what should I imagine?

Some examples of recent plugin vulnerabilities:

  1. The administrator leak
    It often happens that a vulnerability in a plugin allows an administrator account to be created.
    If a hacker or script has access with administrator rights, they can do anything they want.
    Usually advertising is placed in your website, or a script is uploaded that allows advertising to be sent through your website to thousands of addresses.
    And then the rest of the administrators will be removed. In short, you no longer enter your website to undo the hack.
    It goes without saying that when this vulnerability becomes known, it must be resolved as soon as possible and must not sit in a website for weeks or months.
  2. The database injection
    Plugins often have input fields on the front-end of your website. Think of review plugins, contact forms, etc.
    If those fields are not properly secured, a hacker or script can simply misuse them to put data in your database.
    Within 1 second, such a script can create administrators in the database, implement text changes throughout your entire website, with all the consequences that entails.
  3. The newsletter hack
    Do you have a newsletter form? Where visitors can register? In the past, leaks in such plugins have been found that allowed the hacker to add their email address as a login address. This means that every registration of a visitor was also known to him. You wonder what a hacker can do with that, but large numbers of email addresses with names are worth money. Advertising is sent to it. There are people who buy lists of email addresses and first + last names.
    Another leak that you don’t want to be exploited. You don’t realize it quickly, but your users suffer a lot because they get the spam.
  4. The WooCommerce leak
    Plugins that improve your webshop often have access to the database. Your database contains all the accounts of your customers. There have been several leaks in the past where plugins gave hackers access to the database and all customer information.
    It goes without saying that such a hack must be fixed immediately or ASAP once it becomes known!

Who tests my website for leaks?

Of course you don’t expect your webshop to be tested often. And that a leak can therefore not be abused so quickly.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t work the way you think.

When a leak becomes known, hackers write scripts that work like this:
1. The script searches for webshops on Google (You are also listed there)
2. The script makes requests on the websites to the known leaky plugins
3. When the leaky plugins found, use the script that known vulnerability to perform a hack

Safe with a security plugin, right?

Even when your website is secure, such a vulnerability can still be exploited. Security allows the (out) operation of plugins, otherwise your website could not function! Keeping the plugins up-to-date so that there are no leaks is therefore very important.

Conclusion

Now that you know that plugin builders are more likely to make the premium / pro version more secure.. you should consider buying a premium. Especially if you depend on your website for income, or if you have a webshop with many customers.

Premium still does not guarantee 100% security, but the examples have shown that it does make a difference.

 

Plugins, “the candy” of WordPress

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54 THOUSAND free plugins!

WordPress.org currently offers 54,826 plugins.

Plugins with which you can take your blog or company website to the next level.

But, it’s like candy: you shouldn’t take too much of it, otherwise it will work against you. Even if that is difficult, because it is sooo tempting to try them all.

And now you would say, we’ve read that more often. We know now, not too many plugins, security, speed of the website blah blah blah..

We manage many websites,  for 10+ years.. we can tell you: it is being made a mess!

Professional web agencies

Professional web agencies still throw too many plugins into the website. And not just too much, but also plugins that don’t work together.

Example: You can use 1 seo plugin, but you can choose from dozens on WordPress.org

You have a plugin to send Google, you have a plugin to create xml sitemaps, you have a plugin to display data in a structured way for Google.. etc
Downside: They all do a little bit of everything. They also overlap in functions. They do NOT work together! You will notice this automatically if you get unexpected results or problems with indexing in Google.

Anyone can install plugins, but setting them up properly is a study in itself.

Make the overloaded website faster with even more plugins?!

trage website door cachingAnother beautiful one. Every week we see websites that need to be fast, and are therefore equipped with multiple caching plugins.

1 for the speedtest, 1 for Google, 1 for lazy loading images, 1 for caching Html & Css and of course 1 that merges the queries making your website even faster! And to balance it all out a super caching to deliver static pages..

You can compare that with taking Energy drink for energy, a paracetamol against the headache of the energy drink and then get started with a stomach protector and an anti-nausea pill.
Madhouse, don’t!

OF COURSE you can use 1 plugin for speed and 1 plugin for seo, but do your research first. See what features they have, how they work and if you can set them up to your liking.

Another trap, premium plugins

Premium plugins are professional, so that’s okay!

plugins met te veel functies WRONG! Even if you buy plugins for $ 199, a team has been working on it that converts the plugin into an airplane cockpit.

Because the customer wants to be able to do everything! Being able to manage everything without writing a single letter of code, everything must be click and play.
Very nice, but you don’t want to know the impact it has on the website. Entire teams write months of code with a large number of functions and customization options for which jQuery databases are unloaded, inline code is thrown into the html.. all for the sale of that expensive plugin and for the wishes of the customer.

So be very careful with premium plugins.

Keep it at 5-15 plugins max!

Require your web builder not to use every feature with plugins.
We know, it saves him work and time, the costs remain low, but in the long term it almost always causes problems with updating and the functioning of the website.

As a website owner, don’t just throw plugins into your website.

But also you as the owner of your website, don’t just throw plugins into your website 😉
I know, you run into a problem and see that this is solved with 1-2 mouse clicks. But you may be destroying the structure of your website with the plugins you use.

Nice story WPsecure!

From the candy store to a story about what NOT to do. That makes us very happy!

Now that you know what not to do, we’ll help you on your way to doing it as well as possible.

Plugins, what to do:

  1. Find out which plugin works best through some research.Example: you want to use a caching plugin?
    Then search: best 5 caching plugin for wordpress in Google or duckduck 😉
    Buuuut, note the 1st and 2nd are often advertising. Both in Google and on the website in the article itself. Then they get a commission if you buy the plugin. So feel free to look at a free version and don’t take the “very best” where you only get a betaling or subscription. A free plugin is often just as good as a paid one.
  2. See the reviews
    Plugins have a “star rating”, look at the number of people who have given the rating and then the number of stars the plugin has earned.
    Check whether the plugin has been updated recently, and is therefore maintained by the developer.

Now a list of free plugins that have proven themselves in recent years:

  • Autoptimize – For the speed of your website.
  • WooCommerce – From WordPress itself, for a webshop
  • Yoast SEO – The best plugin for optimizing for Google
  • iThemes Security – Security is essential!
  • Count per day – Find out how many visitors your website gets
  • UpdraftPlus – For the backups, your hoster keeps limited

All found in the awesome WordPress.org plugin library

Do you have any top plugins? Or questions? Let me know in the comments!

But remember, not too many plugins at once!

This plugin is outdated or untested with the current version of WordPress, now what?

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This plugin hasn’t been tested with the latest 3 major releases of WordPress. It may no longer be maintained or supported and may have compatibility issues when used with more recent versions of WordPress.

If you see this message when searching for a plugin on WordPress.org, you may be wondering if the plugin is still safe to use and whether you can install or continue using it.

First of all, if there is a known vulnerability, you can check it on the website wpvulndb.com. Use the search bar to see if the plugin is listed and if there is a vulnerability. A vulnerability means that hackers have found a way to modify your website through insecure code in that plugin.

What does “hasn’t been tested with the latest 3 major releases of WordPress” mean? It means that there have been new releases (updates) of WordPress and the plugin developer hasn’t confirmed testing the plugin on the latest versions of WordPress. This is not uncommon because WordPress releases updates frequently, and it can be challenging for busy plugin developers to keep up. It doesn’t necessarily mean there will be a problem if the plugin hasn’t been tested yet, but the yellow notification appears with every new WordPress release. Since WordPress is often “backwards compatible” and maintains older code to ensure compatibility with plugins and themes, the plugin will usually continue to function on newer versions of WordPress.

What does “It may no longer be maintained” mean? It means that the plugin may not be actively maintained or supported by the developer. You can check if the plugin is still being updated by looking at the last updated date on the plugin page.

last updated

5-10 months is generally not a problem. If a plugin hasn’t been updated for 1-3 years, it’s safe to assume that the developer has abandoned it and there will be no more updates.

If there are no updates at all, it is advisable to look for an alternative plugin.

What does “may have compatibility issues” mean? Compatibility issues can arise when plugins are not kept up-to-date. The plugin may no longer work at all, or it may disrupt the styling of your website or cause other functionalities to fail. Sometimes the plugin itself still works fine but triggers an error that affects the functionality of other plugins. As a result, you may mistakenly remove the wrong plugin, thinking it’s causing the issues.

Conclusion: If you see a yellow warning message stating that the plugin is outdated or hasn’t been tested with the current version of WordPress, you should check the last updated date of the plugin. Based on that information, you can determine whether you still want to use the plugin.

The yellow notification itself is not a reason to immediately remove or avoid installing the plugin.

 

 

Preventing others from stealing your texts for their own websites

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You’ve just written a great article or conducted an in-depth interview, and the last thing you want is for someone to simply copy your article and display it on their own website.

Everyone knows how easy it is to copy texts. You select the text, right-click – Cut, and Paste it on your own website.

Is it possible to completely prevent text copying?

Unfortunately, not entirely. Programmers and true content thieves know multiple ways to extract text from a website. But you can make it as difficult as possible!

Preventing text theft with a plugin

The “WP Content Copy Protection & No Right Click” plugin is one of the best ways to make it much harder to copy texts from your website.

Download the plugin for free

What makes this plugin a good solution against text theft?

  • The plugin blocks the ability to Cut & Paste through right-click
  • The CTRL-C & CTRL-V shortcuts are also blocked
  • The ability to select text by hovering over it is blocked

Finally, the plugin also includes methods to make it more difficult to copy images. “Save As” and dragging images are blocked.

How effective is this plugin?

The methods used by this plugin are 70% effective in preventing text copying for most visitors.

Well, has my text already been copied by others?

You can easily check if texts have been copied. When you enter a search query in Google, put the text in “quotes”.
As an example, just take a sentence from an article, put it in quotes in the Google search bar, and see if there are results from other websites.


If all goes well, you will only see your own website in the results 🙂

Copying Texts, to What Extent Is It Illegal?

Don’t immediately rush to write a letter to your lawyer.
Small pieces of text can be copied. A few sentences.
In this case, it is polite if they refer to the source, in this case, your website, but it is not mandatory.

When It Comes to Complete Articles, You Can Take Some Steps

Ask the owner of the website, or the person who posted the texts, to remove your texts or, if you are more interested, to show you as the source in or below the article.

If you do NOT suffer financial loss from it, consider the copying as confirmation that you have written a good article.
Don’t worry too much about it and continue writing new great articles!

But now with the plugin to make copying a bit more difficult?!

Is the most downloaded WordPress.org security plugin the best?

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This message provides information about the most downloaded/active security plugins available in the WordPress plugins section on WordPress.org.

What is the most downloaded/active security plugin at the moment?

  1. WordFence has 3,000,000 active users.
  2. iThemes Security has 1,000,000+ active users.
  3. All In One WP Security & Firewall has 800,000+ active users.
  4. Sucuri has 700,000+ active users.
  5. Cerber Security has 100,000+ active installations.

WordFence

It is surprising that WordFence has three times more users compared to iThemes Security. This could be due to the extensive configuration options of iThemes Security, which may seem a bit complicated for first-time users, or it could be attributed to the marketing efforts of WordFence.

It’s also possible that iThemes Security transitions to a different plugin for its premium version, making the free version inactive. When you upgrade to the pro version, you get a different plugin with the same functionality but with additional features.

WordFence offers a license that provides more features within the plugin itself, which contributes to their higher user numbers.

Is WordFence better than iThemes?

This is a subjective matter of preference and experience. We have been using iThemes for years, and it works well. They collaborate with Sucuri for scanning, and iThemes Security has all the necessary features. We are familiar with these features because we extensively analyzed the 2015 release of iThemes Security to understand its functionality and workings in detail.

iThemes is simply good, and as the saying goes, if something is good, you shouldn’t change it. It could only get worse.

Other security plugins

There is “All In One WP Security,” which is excessively all-encompassing in my opinion. There is also “Cerber,” which, as mentioned earlier, has a relatively low number of active installations. Cerber is an excellent plugin with impressive features that WordFence and iThemes can learn from. It’s surprising and unfortunate that it has fewer users. However, from a marketing perspective, “CERBER” doesn’t sound appealing, does it? It’s not easy to remember.

Is the most downloaded/active security plugin the best?

Well, WordFence and iThemes are currently the best. They have a good cash flow, allowing them to maintain a strong team. Whether they perform better than Cerber or All-In-One Security is still debatable. In the rapidly evolving world of hacking, the best security plugin is the one whose team consistently resolves vulnerabilities first, time and time again, week after week.

A product is only as good as the team behind it, and numbers are only relevant if the team continues with passion. After all, hackers around the world are constantly at work.

In that regard, kudos to all the builders of security plugins!

If you’re looking for a good security plugin

, go for WordFence or iThemes Security.

If you want to ensure that your website is secure, keep in mind that a product is only as good as the team behind it, and you are the weakest link.

Configuring the security plugin correctly is crucial, and this can be a daunting task, not only for website owners but even for WordPress developers.

Why?

You need to enable/disable settings such as XML-RPC, the REST API, directory browsing, and logs.

We spent years perfecting these configurations because certain plugins require XML-RPC or the REST API, and blocking all 404 IPs may not be beneficial.

It’s a specialized skill, a fascinating one. But it’s not something you can do on your own.

Feel free to hire us or ask questions

If you have a serious business website, you can hire us to secure your website. Security is a necessity, especially if you have an online store, not a luxury!

We will provide an affordable invoice with VAT that you can give to your accountant or declare for tax purposes.

If you decide to tackle it yourself, do thorough research like you’re doing now by reading this entire article (kudos to you!). You can learn more on our website in the news section or by searching on Google.

You can also ask questions in the comments. Sometimes, we have busy weeks, but we always do our best to respond within a few days.

Is the most downloaded WordPress.org security plugin the best?

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This message provides information about the most downloaded/active security plugins available in the WordPress plugins section on WordPress.org.

What is the most downloaded/active security plugin at the moment?

  1. WordFence has 3,000,000 active users.
  2. iThemes Security has 1,000,000+ active users.
  3. All In One WP Security & Firewall has 800,000+ active users.
  4. Sucuri has 700,000+ active users.
  5. Cerber Security has 100,000+ active installations.

WordFence

It is surprising that WordFence has three times more users compared to iThemes Security. This could be due to the extensive configuration options of iThemes Security, which may seem a bit complicated for first-time users, or it could be attributed to the marketing efforts of WordFence.

It’s also possible that iThemes Security transitions to a different plugin for its premium version, making the free version inactive. When you upgrade to the pro version, you get a different plugin with the same functionality but with additional features.

WordFence offers a license that provides more features within the plugin itself, which contributes to their higher user numbers.

Is WordFence better than iThemes?

This is a subjective matter of preference and experience. We have been using iThemes for years, and it works well. They collaborate with Sucuri for scanning, and iThemes Security has all the necessary features. We are familiar with these features because we extensively analyzed the 2015 release of iThemes Security to understand its functionality and workings in detail.

iThemes is simply good, and as the saying goes, if something is good, you shouldn’t change it. It could only get worse.

Other security plugins

There is “All In One WP Security,” which is excessively all-encompassing in my opinion. There is also “Cerber,” which, as mentioned earlier, has a relatively low number of active installations. Cerber is an excellent plugin with impressive features that WordFence and iThemes can learn from. It’s surprising and unfortunate that it has fewer users. However, from a marketing perspective, “CERBER” doesn’t sound appealing, does it? It’s not easy to remember.

Is the most downloaded/active security plugin the best?

Well, WordFence and iThemes are currently the best. They have a good cash flow, allowing them to maintain a strong team. Whether they perform better than Cerber or All-In-One Security is still debatable. In the rapidly evolving world of hacking, the best security plugin is the one whose team consistently resolves vulnerabilities first, time and time again, week after week.

A product is only as good as the team behind it, and numbers are only relevant if the team continues with passion. After all, hackers around the world are constantly at work.

In that regard, kudos to all the builders of security plugins!

If you’re looking for a good security plugin

, go for WordFence or iThemes Security.

If you want to ensure that your website is secure, keep in mind that a product is only as good as the team behind it, and you are the weakest link.

Configuring the security plugin correctly is crucial, and this can be a daunting task, not only for website owners but even for WordPress developers.

Why?

You need to enable/disable settings such as XML-RPC, the REST API, directory browsing, and logs.

We spent years perfecting these configurations because certain plugins require XML-RPC or the REST API, and blocking all 404 IPs may not be beneficial.

It’s a specialized skill, a fascinating one. But it’s not something you can do on your own.

Feel free to hire us or ask questions

If you have a serious business website, you can hire us to secure your website. Security is a necessity, especially if you have an online store, not a luxury!

We will provide an affordable invoice with VAT that you can give to your accountant or declare for tax purposes.

If you decide to tackle it yourself, do thorough research like you’re doing now by reading this entire article (kudos to you!). You can learn more on our website in the news section or by searching on Google.

You can also ask questions in the comments. Sometimes, we have busy weeks, but we always do our best to respond within a few days.

ERROR 500 – Due to a plugin – Now what?

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If your website gives an ERROR 500 message, and this is specifically number 500, then you can assume that there is such a code or output error in your website that the server can no longer do anything with it.

In the case of a simple problem, most errors, the server still knows how to handle it.
With an error 500 the server can do nothing with it. It gets completely stuck on the code, as it were, and cannot produce a decent message.

Usually these errors are caused by code errors in plugins.

In 9 out of 10 cases the plugins are the cause of such an error.
Disadvantage of course is that you cannot deactivate the plugin anymore… because you usually cannot get into your admin!

What you have to do then

Delete the plugin. From the server.
Then it will no longer run and you can access your website again, your admin.

Remove the plugin with Filezilla FTP

If you have access to your server using Filezilla, you can simply browse to the plugin and click delete.

Follow these steps to remove the plugin causing the error

If you cannot find the server access in your mailbox, you can request it from your web host or website maker.
Those have the server address, username and password.
Download Filezilla at filezilla-project.org
Fill in the data from step 1 & click on Quick connect

  1. ftp filezilla verbinden
  2. Once you have entered the correct information you will see a number of folders. Your website is usually in 1 of these directories: public_html OR www OR domains
    mappen server root
  3. Then again you will see some files, and some folders. You now go to the wp-content folder.
    wpcontent
  4. We are almost there, you now see the folder called “Plugins”.
    plugins
  5. Delete the plugin OR change the name of the plugin causing the error.
    (Right click on the folder & delete / rename)
    plugin verwijderen

I don’t know which plugin is causing the error!?

Then go through each plugin 1-by-1.

  1. Put a dash or character in front of the plugin’s name. The name change will deactivate the plugin.
  2. Reload your website each time after renaming a plugin, when your website is working again and your admin is accessible again you will know which plugin caused the error.
  3. Do not forget to remove the rename for the other plugins, otherwise they will be deactivated… and you do not want that 🙂

naam veranderen plugin verwijderen

Can I never use the plugin now?

Some plug-ins are simply faulty, they are poorly coded or no longer work with the latest version of WordPress.

But it could also be that the plugin no longer works because it didn’t land correctly on the server. Something can go wrong when uploading and even when installing via your dashboard, causing a file in the plugin to be incomplete.

Possible solution: Try to upload the plugin again manually via Filezilla.

Finding a code solution to the error

Once you’ve re-uploaded the plugin and are sure your WordPress is fine, you can see if others have the error as well.
For example, Google “the plugin name” + “error 500,” or better yet “error 500 fix.”
There are still sometimes solutions to the errors, especially when the plugin is used by many people who also have the problem.

Finding an alternative to the plugin

There are more than 55 thousand free plugins available on WordPress.org
So it is quite possible that another plugin exists that does the same thing, but without error 😉

If there is NO alternative to the plugin

Maybe there is no alternative, or you bought the plugin.
Then go to the developers of the plugin, visit their website and contact them.
Tell them as clearly as you can what, and when it goes wrong. They may have a solution to the error.

Keep in mind that this last step can take a lot of time.
Therefore, first weigh how important a plugin is, whether it is irreplaceable, take the steps for re-uploading, check on google if the error occurs more often. And only then get to work contacting the developers.