How to fix “There has been a critical error on this website” wordpress error

In WordPress or any other CMS, our first step to fixing any error is that first identify the actual error by getting a proper error message. In recent versions of WordPress, it replaces the white screen (White Screen of Death) with the text message “There has been a critical error on your website. Please check your site admin email inbox for instructions”.

If you are new or a beginner in WordPress development then you might be confused by this error message. You will not get any idea why your website is down and what is the actual error or issue on your WordPress website, which stops your entire website. It might be a small PHP code/function or any plugin which causes this WordPress error. But with this WordPress error message “There has been a critical error on this website” you did not get a proper idea of how to fix this WordPress error.

How to fix "There has been a critical error on this website" wordpress error

So in this article, we learn why WordPress shows the “There has been a critical error on your website” WordPress error message instead of the actual error message. And how to display an actual error message.

WordPress displays an error message as “There has been a critical error on your website” instead of an actual error because in WordPress by default debug mode is disabled. So to show the actual WordPress error message we need to enable debug mode on our WordPress website.

To enable WordPress to debug mode we need to follow below mention steps.

  1. Open the wp-config.php file. This wp-config.php file is located in the root folder of the WordPress website.
  2. Search for WordPress debug mode constant as below.

    define('WP_DEBUG',false);

    and change it to true as below

    define('WP_DEBUG',true);
  3. Save wp-config.php file.

After following above mention steps reload your website page. so now instead of “There has been a critical error on this website” it will display an actual error message. So after getting an actual WordPress error message, it will be easy to fix your WordPress website error.