After updating WordPress you notice your WordPress content not displaying, only header content. In my case, the culprit was a caching plugin. Simply flushing the cache fixed the issue. However, this is not always the case. This could happen if you’ve installed multiple plugins without testing or a PHP memory error.
Troubleshooting WordPress content not displaying
Most of the time, problems related to WordPress content not displaying on your site have to do with caching issues. Browser caching, page caching, or CDN caching. All of which are responsible for your WordPress website’s amazing performance. WordPress caching plugins store static versions of your website in a cache storage. Allowing WordPress to skip running heavy scripts every time your site loads for your visitors. The caching process improves WordPress speed and performance, and overall user experience.
A few things that have worked for me
Method 1: Clear your web browser cache
Clear your web browser cache. The purpose of web browsers storing static website content is to improve loading time to enhance user experience. Elements like CSS stylesheets, JavaScripts, images, and other website files to help improve loading time. Sometimes, web browsers fail to update stored cache they will load content from the cached version stored in your browser.
Method 2: Disable WordPress plugins
Inside your WordPress dashboard, navigate to plugins and disable one plugin at a time. After each one you disable, go back to your blog page and refresh. This might take you a few minutes, still you want to repeat these steps until your content returns. This will help you figure out which plugin was the culprit. If this does not work, I’ve listed a few thing you could try below.
Method 3: Adjust WordPress memory limits
WordPress or Web Hosts can put limits on the size of the blog posts we upload. Adding videos and heavy images will most likely exceed memory limits. If this happens, your blog post or page will not display the content on the blog post or page.
One way to fix this is to increase the memory limit by editing the php.ini file located in public_html/php.ini.
Using FTP or File Manager, navigate to “public_html/php.ini” and add the following code snippet, then save.
- upload_max_filesize = 256M
- post_max_size = 256M
- max_execution_time = 300
Method 4: Your WordPress theme functions.php file
Using FTP or File Manager, edit functions.php and add the following code snippet to the bottom of the file, then save.
- @ini_set( ‘upload_max_size’ , ‘256M’ );
- @ini_set( ‘post_max_size’, ‘256M’);
- @ini_set( ‘max_execution_time’, ‘300’ );
Method 5: Your WordPress .htaccess file
An .htaccess file can be used to load custom error pages like, 404 pages, URL redirects, password-protection for specific directories on a server, and more. Increasing the maximum file upload size by modifying the .htaccess file is another way to ensure you will not get any memory limit errors.
- php_value upload_max_filesize 256M
- php_value post_max_size 256M
- php_value max_execution_time 300
- php_value max_input_time 300
Method 6: Add code to wp-config.php file
Increase the memory limit to 64 MB by editing the ‘wp-config.php’ file. After the ‘<?php tag’ add the following code.
- define(‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ’64M’);
Method 7: Use a WordPress plugin to increase file upload size
For those of you who are uncomfortable adding code snippets to WordPress, this option is for you. The name of the plugin is called; “Increase Maximum Upload File Size”. Click here to download, or search for it from within your WordPress dashboard/plugins area. Installation configuring this plugin is straight forward.
The first time this happened to me was in 2004, I was pretty new to troubleshooting WordPress. WordPress had only been out for a year and there was hardly any helpful info out about WordPress content not displaying. Long story short, I performed the above steps for the fix.
I hope these instructions helped. If you’d like to continue this conversation, post your comments below.
Resources and additional info: Click here for more helpful WordPress tutorials.
