How to Fix Critical Error During Install on WordPress

Do you encounter a critical error during install on WordPress?

WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems in the world that allows users to host and build websites. It is commonly used for blogs, company websites, online stores, and more. 

With the number of tools and extensions that you can install with WordPress, you basically have everything you need for a website on one platform. 

Although it’s certainly one of the best, this doesn’t mean that WordPress doesn’t come with its own issues. 

Recently, there have been complaints from users who encounter a critical error during install on WordPress. Most of the time, this issue occurs when users try to install WordPress on a locally hosted website. 

If you are currently experiencing this problem, we’ve got you covered. 

Today, we’ve decided to make a guide for fixing the critical error message during install on WordPress. 

Let’s dive right in!

1. Enable WP_DEBUG. 

The critical error users encounter on WordPress links to its official website about debugging. On the site, it suggests various ways to debug errors on WordPress. If you encounter installation problems on WordPress, try enabling WP_DEBUG. 

Here’s what you need to do: 

  1. First, open the ‘WP-Config.php’ file in the text editor. 
  2. After that, locate this line: 
define( ‘WP_DEBUG’, false ); 
  1. Lastly, change the condition to ‘True’
define( ‘WP_DEBUG’, true ); 

Save the changes and see if the problem would still occur. 

2. Repeat Installation. 

If you’ve encountered errors while installing WordPress on your website, you can try repeating the installation process. However, this is not as straightforward if you already have MySQL tables present. 

Due to this, you’ll need to clear existing MySQL tables first.

  1. Login into phpMyAdmin and choose the database you have created for this installation on the left sidebar. 
  2. After that, the list of tables from the database should appear. At the bottom, click on Check All to select all the tables. 
  3. Now, click on the dropdown menu nearby that shows ‘With Selected’ and choose the DROP option. 
  4. Confirm your action by clicking YES
critical error during install on WordPress

Once done, try running the installation process once more. 

3. Enable Debug Log.

One of the quickest ways to know what causes the error during installation is to enable debug logs on WordPress. This will allow you to pinpoint the root cause of the error while installing the system. 

Here’s how you can enable debug log: 

  1. First, open the WP-Config.php file on your computer. 
  2. Now, look for:
define( ‘WP_DEBUG’, true );
  1. Lastly, add define( ‘WP_DEBUG_LOG’, true ); and save the changes. 

Run the installation again to generate the log file, which contains the error. From there, make the necessary actions to fix the error on the log file. 

That brings us to the end of our guide for fixing the critical error during install on WordPress. If you have questions, please drop a comment below, and we’ll do our best to answer them.  

If this guide helped you, please share it. 🙂

Author

  • John Sixto

    John is a staff writer at Saint and comes from a SAP ABAP development background. He has a Bachelors in IT and has been writing since 2018, with over 500 posts published. He loves to build PCs and has a deep curiosity in understanding how different components and configurations work. John spends hundreds of hours at a time, researching and testing the software and apps, before he proceeds to write about it. LinkedIn X (Twitter)

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