Troubleshoot: Fatal error caused by a plugin

If you receive a fatal error on your site and you’re not able to access the WordPress Dashboard anymore, you can follow the next steps in order to gain back access to your site.

Find the plugin that is causing this

While looking at the fatal error message you can see what plugin is causing this.

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Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Attempt to modify property "response" on bool in /mnt/supserv_sites_folder
/sites/TestSite/files/wp-content/plugins/wordpress-creation-kit-pro/update/update-checker.php:261

In the above example, it can be seen the fatal error was caused by the WordPress Creation Kit Pro plugin (…/wp-content/plugins/wordpress-creation-kit-pro/..).

Renaming the folder

1. The first thing you need to do is to access your site via FTP.  For this, you will need a set of SFTP credentials and a FTP client application.

If it’s your first time connecting to your site via FTP then our recommendation will be to contact your hosting provider and ask them to help you with this.

2. After you’ve gained access to your site via FTP, you will need to follow the path indicated by the error until you find the folder of the plugin that is causing this. Once you found that folder, you need to right-click on it and choose “Rename”.

For example, you can add a “-issue” at the end.

Now you will be able to login back into your site’s Dashboard since the plugin that was causing the error will not be recognized anymore by WordPress (because it’s ‘disabled’).

Keep in mind that this was just a temporary solution to regain access to your site. Now you will need to contact the developers of the plugin that was causing the fatal error and ask them for assistance on what you can do further. When you’re contacting the developers of that plugin you should also send them the initial fatal error message you’ve received.