Inaccessible back office

This thread is resolved. Here is a description of the problem and solution.

Problem:

The client is experiencing a critical error when trying to access your development website's back office due to the sitepress-multilingual-cms plugin.

Solution:

The issue is likely due to the SimpleXML extension not being active on your server, which is necessary for the WPML Translation Editor to function correctly. We recommend contacting your hosting provider to enable the SimpleXML extension. For further guidance, you can refer to related support tickets:

If this solution does not resolve your issue or seems outdated, we highly recommend checking related known issues, verifying the version of the permanent fix, and confirming that you have installed the latest versions of themes and plugins. If the problem persists, please open a new support ticket.

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Tagged: Bug

This topic contains 3 replies, has 1 voice.

Last updated by mkt-portalp 1 month ago.

Assisted by: Bigul.

Author	Posts
May 5, 2025 at 7:37 am #16994786
mkt-portalp	Background of the issue: I am trying to access my development website backoffice at hidden link. Symptoms: The sitepress-multilingual-cms plugin causes a bug and the website returns a critical error. Questions: Why is the sitepress-multilingual-cms plugin causing a critical error? How can I resolve the issue to access my backoffice?
May 5, 2025 at 7:14 pm #16997984
Andrey WPML Supporter since 06/2013 Languages: English (English ) Russian (Русский ) Timezone: Europe/Kyiv (GMT+03:00)	While one of my teammates takes care of your ticket, I will provide you with the first debugging steps. First, you need to see what the errors are. Guessing what might be the problem and trying different solutions may lead to even more trouble. The first step is to enable debug. You can do this by adding a few lines to the site’s wp-config.php file. With error log enabled, you will see what the actual problem is. To enable it, open your wp-config.php file and look for define(‘WP_DEBUG’, false);. Change it to: define('WP_DEBUG', true); In order to enable the error logging to a file on the server you need to add yet one more similar line: define( 'WP_DEBUG_LOG', true ); In this case, the errors will be saved to a debug.log log file inside the /wp-content/directory. https://wpml.org/documentation/support/debugging-wpml/ Let us know what you see after the debug mode has been enabled.
May 9, 2025 at 9:00 am #17015323
mkt-portalp	Hello Andrey, Thanks for your support. You'll find the screenshot of the error in the attachment. Our hosting company proceeded to a server update a few days ago. Maybe this is the origin of the problem. Best regards,
May 9, 2025 at 10:30 am #17015938
Bigul WPML Supporter since 01/2013 Languages: English (English ) Timezone: Europe/Vienna (GMT+02:00)	Hello, Thank you for the updates. The SimpleXML extension, which is required for the WPML Translation Editor to function properly, is currently not active on your server. Please contact your hosting provider to enable it. For more details, refer to the related support tickets: https://wpml.org/forums/topic/wpml-stopped-translating-on-live-website-but-works-on-test-website/ https://wpml.org/forums/topic/fatal-error-uncaught-error-call-to-undefined-function-simplexml_load_file-in/ -- Thanks! Bigul
May 12, 2025 at 1:21 pm #17023185
mkt-portalp	Le XML extension has been installed by our hosting provider, the issue is solved. Thank you for your help. Kind regards,