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Common issues related to Wordpress (incl. Elementor)

Listed below are some common issues that sometimes occur when using Wordpress with Elementor or other resource-intensive plugins.

My Wordpress site is slow

If your Wordpress website seems slow, try the following steps:

In a vast majority of cases, slowness of Wordpress websites is caused by having too many and/or poorly optimised plugins installed on the site. Before looking at any other causes, make sure you only have plugins installed on your site which the site actually requires to function. Try disabling plugins one-by-one to see if any single one causes a significant change in performance.

In certain cases, especially on resource-heavy sites, you may need to increase the PHP memory limit, as described here: How can I change PHP settings? How can I increase the file upload limit or memory limit of PHP?

Try analysing your site performance with a performance audit, such as Google Lighthouse. Such tools give useful tips on how to improve performance, and also include Wordpress-specific hints.

If you have a high-traffic site and you experience slowness during peak traffic, look into caching solutions for Wordpress, such as WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache. If you still experience slow loading speeds, consider upgrading to a higher plan with more resources.

Too many redirects / redirect loop when accessing admin dashboard

If your site is using Cloudflare and the Wordpress admin dashboard is inaccessible due to a redirect loop ("Too many redirects" error in the browser), the problem is likely caused by the SSL/TLS mode in Cloudflare.

Follow these steps:

  1. Navigate to the management page for your domain at Cloudflare
  2. Click on SSL/TLS in the left sidebar.
  3. Switch the SSL/TLS encryption mode is to Full or Full (Strict), and not Flexible or Off. (See screenshot below)
  4. After 5 minutes, the Wordpress admin dashboard should be accessible again.

In Flexible mode, Cloudflare connects to your site on our servers using an unencrypted connection, ie. over HTTP, even when the visitor uses HTTPS. Wordpress is usually configured to redirect from HTTP to HTTPS for security reasons, and has no idea that the visitor is already using HTTPS (since the request goes through Cloudflare which turns it into HTTP). As such, Wordpress tries to continuously redirect the visitor to HTTPS, causing a redirect loop. Setting the SSL/TLS mode to Full or Full (strict) makes Cloudflare connect over HTTPS, resolving the issue and improving security.

Elementor fails to load, shows a loading spinner or is slow

This concerns the following symptoms:

  1. Opening a page for editing with Elementor (or other site builder) results in a loading spinner and/or the page not loading
  2. Editing a page with Elementor is very slow

Try the following solutions in this order:

  1. Update Elementor and Elementor Pro (if applicable). Elementor Pro is updated separately from Elementor and the update often appears only after Elementor has been updated. Using an incompatible version of Elementor Pro often results in Elementor not loading.
  2. If updating did not help, increase the PHP memory limit, as described here: How can I change PHP settings? How can I increase the file upload limit or memory limit of PHP?
  3. If increasing the memory limit did not help, disable ModSecurity. Navigate to cPanel and find ModSecurity under the Security section. Switch the toggle for your domain to Off. If this does not resolve your issue, it is recommended to turn ModSecurity back on to improve security on your site.

403 Access Denied error on certain pages

If you find yourself hitting 403 on certain pages, try switching off ModSecurity:
Navigate to cPanel and find ModSecurity under the Security section. Switch the toggle for your domain to Off. If this does not resolve your issue, it is recommended to turn ModSecurity back on to improve security on your site.