My Broken Website!

It’s 9pm on Sunday night. Thank goodness it’s a long weekend, or I’d be panicking! The day has gone, the blog post isn’t written, but I fixed my broken website today.

And the Blog?

A broken website wasn’t on the plan for today. Nope. Today was going to be catch up on writing day. Well – catch up on the Ultimate Blog Challenge, actually.

That was the plan – before I checked my email.

There, glaring at me, was an email from WordPress. No, not personally from WordPress. I mean, it had the word WordPress on it. And it had the words technical error; broken; and the name of the theme I use, but not necessarily in that order.

I get a lot of emails like that and I don’t take a lot of notice. They’re usually just alerting me to a broken link, or a plugin needing an update. But this one was different. When I saw those ‘broken’ and ‘technical error’ words, I panicked.

Was my website broken? Were all my blogs gone?

Once I calmed down and started thinking a little more rationally, I logged into my website, held my breath, and closed my eyes.

Image by ijmaki from Pixabay 

Then I slowly opened one eye, then the other, and then started to breathe again.

If there was something wrong, I couldn’t tell. I mean, it looked okay to me. And my blogs were all there. Phew!

The problem had something to do with a recent update on one of the plugins. And the fact the theme hadn’t kept up with the updated plugin, which seemingly made them both incompatible.

But it was a big enough scare to send me scurrying off to Google in search of another theme.

I needed a theme that:

  • would play nicely with Gutenberg (WordPress Block system)
  • has had a significant number of installations
  • scored mostly five-stars on a lot of reviews
  • was recommended by someone I trust

Beginner’s Guide

On the first Google page was WPBeginner’s post of 26 Best Gutenberg Friendly WordPress Themes (2020). And I trust WPBeginner, so I clicked on the link.

The link opened to a well-organised page that gave the basic description of each recommendation, which made it easy to choose the best theme for my humble needs.

Installation and activation were quick and easy, as I would expect from a popular plugin. Oh, and it was f-r-e-e, which is even better.

I love how easy it is to switch themes in WordPress. Naturally, I used live preview so I could see how my site would look, before I hit the final button. And yes, it might take some getting used to the different layout, but it looked okay.

My new theme is the most customisable theme I’ve ever used.

So today, I tweaked my new theme.

One of the first things I checked was the comments section. It seems to be working – well it was when I sent myself a test comment. But if you find any problems with it, please let me know.

Tweaking is by no means finished, but I’ll work on it over the next few days.

And I don’t have a broken website!

Please follow and like us:

2 responses to “My Broken Website!”

  1. Paul Taubman Avatar

    Been there. Done that! And I might be redoing my site as well. Thanks for sharing.

    1. Maureen Avatar

      It is a scary place to be, Paul, in the middle of an Ultimate Blog Challenge, when you’re already a few posts behind the 8-ball. Thankfully it all ended well.
      Good luck with your rebuild. It’s kind of scary but fun – if it all works well.
      Having a good platform, like WordPress, helps.