Yoast 15.7 not compatible with SiteGround Ultrafast PHP

We are sorry to hear that you’re having trouble with our plugin. We are not aware of such an issue where Yoast SEO v15.7 isn’t compatible with the SiteGround UltraFast PHP based server.

However, we can definitely look into the issue further for you. Can you please ask your web hosting provider whether they could find what exactly was causing the issue and where there was an error in the server error log that shows the specific errors?

We look forward to hearing from you.

SiteGround senior support rep says: “I cannot provide more details on the nature of the problem.”

SiteGround Site Tools, Error Log shows: “Good job! There are no errors found on your website recently {{thumbs up}}”

I don’t think I’ll get anything more out of their support team. You’ll probably have more luck, particularly if you suggest that you’ll remove them from your list of recommended hosting providers unless they help out ??

By the way, I replicated the problem and solution on a second site. Other plugins updated ok. Yoast update produced the error. Switching to Standard PHP as recommended by SG fixed it.

Back to you…

More on the environment: Siteground cloud plan (not shared plan). WP 5.6. PHP 7.3.26. Problem occurred with Divi theme v4.7 and WordPress TwentyTwentyOne theme. With and without any other plugins activated.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by russwiltshire.

Thanks for your clarification on everything. SiteGround is a recommended host by us. In fact, we run Yoast.com on SiteGround and never heard of such an issue before.

That said, we’ll surely keep the issue with us and if we can reproduce it somewhere, we can definitely look into this on our end as well.

So to be clear, are you running Yoast 15.7 on SG with Ultrafast PHP?

This is quite important because according to SiteGround I either have to go switch off Ultrafast PHP on all my customer sites or downgrade Yoast. But if it’s not a problem for you then there is some other issue I need to resolve and I’ll go back to SG and tell them so.

We are running Yoast.com on a SiteGround enterprise-based server and that may not comes with the UltraFast PHP option.

That said, to investigate the issue further, we’ll need more information that we can use to find out what’s causing the issue as we are not aware of such an issue with our plugin. So, without specific information, we are out of a clue where to look at.

ok, thanks for the clarification.

Additionally, I have found that if I downgrade to Standard PHP, upgrade Yoast, then reinstate Ultrafast PHP, everything is good. So I guess I didn’t get the full story from siteground. I’d like to say that’s unusual…

If you do want further information on this, I think you’ll have to contact SG directly. It was SiteGround that said your product wasn’t compatible. I’m just the messenger.

Anyhew, let’s close this ticket. Hopefully it might offer some clarification for anyone else with a similar issue.

That’s simply not true. Yoast SEO both free and paid works perfectly fine with the Ultrafast PHP. There’s something on your website timing out but definitelly not an incompatibility between the plugin and the way we run PHP.

Ultrafast PHP is a new way of running the PHP service – faster and able to handle more requests. It doesn’t introduce any changes to the PHP language though.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by Hristo Pandjarov.

Well, as I say, I’m just repeating what your support team told me. So perhaps you could go have a chat with them.

What’s your domain name, I can take a look at it. Depdning on the info provided a representative may have been confused and given an incorrect reply. The plugin is 100% compatible with the Ultrafast PHP. There’s something in your particular website causing issues. Most probably the overal memory consumption / loading time exceeds a limit and by disabling a vital plugin you lower it. That doesn’t mean that this is the problem.

Come on, play fair mate. Maybe before suggesting that I confused your support rep you should go check the ticket and speak to him. As I recall all they asked for was my domain and what I was doing immediately before the site crashed. Difficult to see how I confused the guy with that information. More likely your support rep was focused on getting my site up and running (which he did, quickly, so that was good) and made a well-meaning but rushed diagnosis.

Thanks for the offer to take another look but if it really is an issue with my WordPress installation I’m capable of diagnosing it myself. For the record – everything looks tickety-boo right now.

This has happened on 6 different sites now, which is every site I’ve attempted to update, and a colleague of mine working at another web development agency reported the same thing. So I think that’s fairly conclusive – the Yoast plugin is compatible with SiteGround’s ultrafast PHP during normal operation, but the plugin update process causes a Bad Gateway error. The workaround is to downgrade to standard PHP first, then update Yoast, then upgrade to ultrafast PHP again.

Yoast is a good plugin, I use it a lot and would still recommend it to others. I also continue to use SiteGround and generally I’m happy with them and would recommend them also… no hosting provider is perfect and SG is one of the better ones. I didn’t post this ticket to make anyone look bad. I was genuinely trying to find out what was going on and help anyone else who might be experiencing the same problem. So I’m a bit disappointed with Yoast’s response, and particularly SiteGround’s response. Perhaps now that I can confirm this is a consistent problem and others have been able to replicate it, they might want to investigate it further.

You’re welcome.

Hey everyone, we’re aware of an issue here and are working with the team at SiteGround on seeing if we can replicate and fix it.

Ultrafast PHP may have other benefits not directly related to page speed. The quicker a request is processed, the quicker server resources are released, and therefore the server can handle a greater throughput of requests for any given server specification. I guess.

I’d rather not provide domains because they are all live sites or confidential dev sites. But I can provide the steps I performed recently during a test so you could try to replicate them… With some new information pertaining to the WORDFENCE plugin also…

Create new SG website (this one was on a GoGeek plan but I’ve had the same problem on a cloud plan).
Select to install WordPress during the site creation process as provided by SG.
Enable Ultrafast PHP, get a LetsEncrypt cert, enforce https.
Remove the WordPress Starter plugin.
SG Optimizer plugin running with default settings.
Install and activate WordFence plugin. Default settings.
Install e.g. version 5.4 of Yoast using WP CLI.
Run through the Yoast setup wizard.
Check that the default WordPress home page loads ok – it does.
In wp-admin, update the Yoast plugin.
Go back to the front end, receive 502 error.
In Site Tools, switch to Standard PHP.
Check front end, 502 Error disappears and site is working again.
In Site Tools, switch to Ultrafast PHP.
Check front end, continues to work fine.

I tested the same steps without enabling ultrafast PHP at any point, and there were no errors.

NEW INFORMATION: Today I tested the above steps but without installing WordFence and did NOT get a 502 error. So in my case, the 502 error occurred during Yoast update with Ultrafast PHP enabled AND WordFence active. Updating Yoast with Standard PHP enabled OR WordFence deactivated avoids the errors.

It would be interesting if others could confirm which plugins they have active besides Yoast when they tried to update Yoast and experienced a 502.

Hope that helps.