Possible bug

I also noticed that I get a lot of jquery and ajax errors showing up in my browser’s console when I’m in the admin. Example:

POST …../wp-admin/admin-ajax.php 500
jquery.min.js?ver=3.6.1:2

When I disable Yoast SEO, no more errors. I rolled back to 19.11, but I’m going to try going further back in versions. Seems like the 19.x versions cause me more problems.

Now I think this plugin has corrupted my site–how, I’m not sure. But I went to put 19.13 back in and activating it crashed my site with:

There has been a critical error on this website. Please check your site admin email inbox for instructions.

Even with previous rollback versions, still causes colossal errors. Is there something now in the database that is doing this?

@roughpixels

Thank you for reaching out!

We understand that after updating Yoast SEO to v19.3 you encountered a fatal error.

We tried to reproduce the error by updating the plugin from v19.2 to v19.3 under WordPress v6.1.1 and default TwentyTwenty theme active, but to no avail.

While the error suggests that one of the class references “WPSEO_Primary_Term_Admin” is not found in the specified file, we would suggest you to the

1. Completely uninstall the Yoast SEO free
2. Clear all your caching from your theme, plugin, server, CDN like CloudFlare or browser.
3. Reinstall the fresh Yoast SEO free and clear caches again.

Do you still see the same error?

Hi Suwash,

Actually, I couldn’t click “Delete” from the admin, so I had to use FTP to delete the plugin. I then reinstalled a previous version. Clicking to activate, I was encountering fatal errors again but also noticed my browser’s console was displaying several jquery and ajax 500 errors. Every couple of minutes it would show another duplicate 500 error. Basically, similar issues with earlier versions that I installed, also doing the same thing.

I then decided to click update to the 18.9 which I last had in and tried, which crashed when the plugin was active. When I finally got it deactivated, I was able to update it back to 19.13…again, fatal errors–worse this time.

I should also mention that for any of the versions I also had installed for testing, clicking “deactivate” errors and trying to delete–it just kept showing it as “Deleting…”.

Not sure what is going on, but I’m wondering if there is something corrupted in the database for Yoast, therefore, regardless of the version installed, it’s causing conflict. I’m trying not to delete the tables for Yoast because I’m guessing I would lose all my SEO work for various sections of my website. I will try all this again in a few minutes.

Removed, cleared cache, closed browser, reopened my site, installed 19.13 version. Clicked to activate, then I got:

There has been a critical error on this website. Please check your site admin email inbox for instructions.

The browser's console on the page that crashed:
GET https://www……./plugins.php?activate=true&plugin_status=all&paged=1&s 500
/wp-admin/plugins.php?activate=true&plugin_status=all&paged=1&s:1

I click the back button on the browser to escape the crashed page and each back page has a 500 error.

There is the mystery, even after deleting the plugin (not the db tables) and reinstalling, it’s crashing the site with a fatal error.

If I delete the tables, that is going to delete all my seo work, isn’t it?

Thanks for the additional information from your troubleshooting. Taking a closer look at the error details from your initial thread, it seems you’ve current PHP version is v8.1.13, and the Yoast plugin appears to be incompatible with the upgrade. Please allow us to clarify.

We would like to let you know that?WordPress itself is only beta compatible with PHP 8.0. Our devs are continuously improving 8.0 and 8.1 compatibilities, but this is a huge step, as PHP 8 introduces a lot of big changes when compared to the 7.4x versions

It should already be reasonably compatible with PHP 8 at this point with the exception of a couple of notices. Could you please try downgrading PHP to v8.0 and see if that helps?

Thank you for the reply back….

I should also mention that I just recently rebuilt my site locally using XAMPP which uses PHP 8.1.6. No errors throughout my development. Only appeared when I switched up the live site (which uses PHP 8.1.13). Perhaps this plugin works on 8.1.6, but not higher than that version).

I’m going to downgrade my PHP now and see if this is the cause. I will follow up shortly.

I went down to PHP 7.4.33. Still crashes my site. I decided to paste one of the multiple wp-admin/admin-ajax.php 500 lines here, in case it helps. I should mention that with the Yoast active, most things in the Admin area I click on, it crashed or gives me the jquery 500 errors in the console each time I navigate to somewhere else.

 POST https://www...../wp-admin/admin-ajax.php 500
send @ jquery.min.js?ver=3.6.1:2
ajax @ jquery.min.js?ver=3.6.1:2
s.ajax.s.ajax @ jquery-migrate.min.js?ver=3.3.2:2
l @ heartbeat.min.js?ver=6.1.1:2
(anonymous) @ heartbeat.min.js?ver=6.1.1:2
setTimeout (async)
m @ heartbeat.min.js?ver=6.1.1:2
v @ heartbeat.min.js?ver=6.1.1:2
h @ heartbeat.min.js?ver=6.1.1:2
(anonymous) @ heartbeat.min.js?ver=6.1.1:2
dispatch @ jquery.min.js?ver=3.6.1:2
y.handle @ jquery.min.js?ver=3.6.1:2

For reference, here is part of my host’s server info:

Server architecture	Linux 3.10.0-962.3.2.lve1.5.56.el7.x86_64 x86_64
Web server	LiteSpeed
PHP version	7.4.33 (Supports 64bit values)
PHP SAPI	litespeed
PHP max input variables	1000
PHP time limit	30
PHP memory limit	128M
PHP memory limit (only for admin screens)	256M

Anyway, as usual, once I deactivate the Yoast SEO plugin, no more errors. Remember too, that rebuilding my new version of my site locally on XAMPP which uses Apache/2.4.53 (Win64) OpenSSL/1.1.1n PHP/8.1.6. No issues until I archived the site and moved it to the live host server. Actually, with the previous version of my site, I was getting those problems from the Yoast plugin.

I’m going to switch my PHP back to 8.0 (not 8.1.13) and figure out if I have to change my SEO plugin to something else. I may have to drop Yoast after years of using it.

Regarding request?wp-admin/admin-ajax.php,?when Yoast SEO is activated seems to have been blocked, giving a?500 Internal Server Error that could be due to other sources creating a conflict. For instance, sometimes security plugins like WordFence (without blaming plugins, sometimes JetPack, Elementor, etc.) and a combination of other active plugins within the setup might cause unexpected issues.

We’ve confirmed that the latest version of the Yoast SEO plugin, while tested with WP v6.1.1, PHP 7.4.x, and the TwentyTwenty theme, doesn’t have this problem.

That being said, often, we see problems occur in combination with another plugin or theme. The fastest way to rule out any conflict is to deactivate all non-Yoast plugins and switch to a standard theme like Twenty Twenty.

Please test this on your development or staging site if you have one. If not, we recommend using the Health Check & Troubleshooting plugin. This plugin has a troubleshooting mode, which does not affect normal visitors to your site.

If you’re unfamiliar with checking for conflicts, we’d like to point you to a step-by-step guide that will walk you through the process: How to check for plugin conflicts

• This reply was modified 1 year, 11 months ago by Suwash. Reason: few edits

After a good night of sleep, I jumped on setting up a dev site and spent about 3 hours troubleshooting, with some interesting findings. There is a lot of combinations of efforts here, so it might get a bit confusing.

• WPForms and Yoast Active with my theme; going to the Customizer, 500 errors.
• WPForms and Yoast Active with the Twenty Twenty theme; going to the Customizer, 500 errors.
• **WPForms Lite and Yoast are active with my theme; going to the customizer, critical error 500
• **WPForms Lite and Yoast active with TwentyTwenty; going to the customizer, critical error 500
• WPForms deactivated and Yoast is active with my theme; going to the customizer, No errors.
• WPForms deactivated and Yoast active with TwentyTwenty; going to the customizer, No errors.
• **WPForms Lite deactivated and Yoast active with my theme; going to the customizer, no errors.
• **WPForms Lite deactivated and Yoast active with TwentyTwenty; going to the customizer, no errors.
• WPForms active and Yoast deactivated with my theme; going to the customizer, 500 critical error.
• WPForms active and Yoast deactivated with TwentyTwenty; going to the customizer, No errors.
• **WPForms Lite is active and Yoast deactivated with my theme; going to the customizer, no errors.
• **WPForms Lite active and Yoast deactivated with TwentyTwenty; going to the customizer, no errors.

Then, I did similar tests, but instead of going to the customizer, I went to the theme editor under Appearance in the Admin area.

• WPForms and Yoast are active with my theme; using the theme editor to edit my theme, I get an error “Something went wrong. Your change may not have been saved.”
• WPForms and Yoast active with TwentyTwenty; using the theme editor to edit, changes are saved.
• **WPForms Lite and Yoast are active with my theme; using the theme editor, changes are saved.
• **WPForms Lite and Yoast active with TwentyTwenty; using the theme editor, changes are saved.
• WPForms deactivated and Yoast is active with my theme, using the theme editor to edit my theme, changes are saved.
• WPForms deactivated and Yoast active with TwentyTwenty, using the theme editor to edit, changes are saved.
• **WPForms Lite deactivated and Yoast active with my theme, using the theme editor, changes saved.
• **WPForms Lite deactivated and Yoast active with TwentyTwenty, using the theme editor, changes saved.
• WPForms is active and Yoast deactivated with my theme, using the theme editor to edit my theme, changes are saved.
• WPForms active and Yoast deactivated with TwentyTwenty, using the theme editor to edit, changes are saved.

As I started to remember when critical errors will happening, I think it was around a few weeks back when I installed WPForms Lite to try out as I was using Contact Form 7. Perhaps a coincidence, but since then, I was encountering issues. I’ve always had Yoast SEO installed.

It appears there is a conflict when both WPForms Lite (and their Pro) with Yoast SEO are both active, the critical errors happen with the Twenty Twenty theme active as well when testing it with my own theme.

If WPForms is active with Yoast turned off, things work. If Yoast is active and WPForms is off, things work. If both are on, then the errors happen (with either theme). The odd one out of this test is that when the WPForms PRO is on but Yoast is off, I get a critical error…but not if I use the WPForms Lite.

**It’s hard to tell where the conflict is coming from. I’m going to reference this info to WPForms as well. There seem to be conflicts between WPForms and Yoast when both are active, even when switching to a WP default theme (TwentyTwenty as tested).

For the one test that I said was odd when using my theme, it threw an error with just the WPForms Pro.

Lots to assess here, hopefully reading the above testing, it won’t be too confusing.

@roughpixels thank you so much for sharing the troubleshooting report as that would help us go deep into the root of the problem.

The odd one out of this test is that when the WPForms PRO is on but Yoast is off, I get a critical error…but not if I use the WPForms Lite.

Let us know once you hear from WPForms PRO support, as having both teams work together could help find the root cause of this error.

Please note: The server error logs usually provide more details about the issue. If you have access to your server error log, note the date and time before generating the error again. Then, immediately check your server error log for any errors during that period. If you don’t have access to your server error log, please ask your hosting provider to look for you.

If you or your web host cannot pinpoint the cause, please provide us with a copy of the server error log for further investigation. As server logs can cover a significant amount of time, please limit the error log to a few minutes before and after the behavior was reproduced.

If the server error log does not contain any errors at the time of the issue, please enable advanced WordPress debugging with the code?here. This code requires that you change line 84 to point to a path on your server. Your web host can provide you with a secure path to save the error.log file.

I got access to the wp-admin error_log, which is where all this stuff is happening. I provided WPForms a txt of the info below from further testing as of today December 22 when I found the error_log. Hopefully the info below sheds more light.

Day Two Testing – Going to the Customizer:

• WPForms and Yoast active. Going to Customizer with my theme; Critical error 500
• WPForms and Yoast active. Going to Customizer with TwentyTwenty; Critical error 500
• WPForms deactivated Yoast active. Going to customizer with my theme; no errors.
• WPForms deactivated Yoast active. Going to customizer with TwentyTwenty; no errors.
• WPForms active Yoast deactivated. Going to customizer with my theme; no errors.
• WPForms active Yoast deactivated. Going to customizer with TwentyTwenty; no errors.
• **However, while in the customizer for both themes and you click on the Change active theme for preview, getting 500 errors.
• **WPForms and Yoast deactivated. Going to customizer for both themes have no errors. The Change active theme also works without errors.

Here are the Log Files for this time stamp of testing

• [22-Dec-2022 19:00:13 UTC] PHP Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 134217728 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 20480 bytes) in /home/rovgbpbf/dev.roughpixels.com/wp-includes/class-wpdb.php on line 2153
• [22-Dec-2022 19:00:24 UTC] PHP Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 134217728 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 20480 bytes) in /home/rovgbpbf/dev.roughpixels.com/wp-includes/nav-menu.php on line 914
• [22-Dec-2022 19:01:08 UTC] PHP Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 134217728 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 20480 bytes) in /home/rovgbpbf/dev.roughpixels.com/wp-includes/class-wpdb.php on line 2153
• [22-Dec-2022 19:01:13 UTC] PHP Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 134217728 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 20480 bytes) in /home/rovgbpbf/dev.roughpixels.com/wp-includes/class-wpdb.php on line 2153
• [22-Dec-2022 19:06:21 UTC] PHP Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 134217728 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 32768 bytes) in /home/rovgbpbf/dev.roughpixels.com/wp-admin/includes/ajax-actions.php on line 2936
• [22-Dec-2022 19:07:54 UTC] PHP Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 134217728 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 8192 bytes) in /home/rovgbpbf/dev.roughpixels.com/wp-admin/includes/ajax-actions.php on line 4668
• [22-Dec-2022 19:08:32 UTC] PHP Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 134217728 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 8192 bytes) in /home/rovgbpbf/dev.roughpixels.com/wp-admin/includes/ajax-actions.php on line 4879
• [22-Dec-2022 19:09:30 UTC] PHP Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 134217728 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 8192 bytes) in /home/rovgbpbf/dev.roughpixels.com/wp-admin/includes/ajax-actions.php on line 4879
• [22-Dec-2022 19:09:42 UTC] PHP Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 134217728 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 8192 bytes) in /home/rovgbpbf/dev.roughpixels.com/wp-admin/includes/ajax-actions.php on line 4756

In the meantime, also as it seems PHP Fatal errors are prominent as per the error log, to help narrow down the root cause, I would recommend that you consider increasing the memory size of the server.

This was a big thread ?? Anyway, I logged into my host and increased the PHP Memory limit to 256 MB. I will see how things go for a couple of days but so far with testing throughout today, no errors.