So, this client contacted me, saying the shop page was broken, white page, without content (header, page title and footer were showing, no products though). I periodically experience the same problem on another website, and know how to (temporarily) fix it.
I know when I resave woocommerce > settings > products (without making changes), the problem is solved. I made a database backup before & after resaving these settings. I ran the diff command, and found the main difference between before & after, which is the rewrite_rules option (in wp_options page).
Before resaving:
s:7:\"shop/?$\";
s:27:\"index.php?post_type=product\";
s:37:\"shop/feed/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$\";
s:44:\"index.php?post_type=product&feed=$matches[1]\";
s:32:\"shop/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$\";
s:44:\"index.php?post_type=product&feed=$matches[1]\";
s:24:\"shop/page/([0-9]{1,})/?$\";
s:45:\"index.php?post_type=product&paged=$matches[1]\";
After resaving:
s:16:\"letterwebshop/?$\";
s:27:\"index.php?post_type=product\";
s:46:\"letterwebshop/feed/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$\";
s:44:\"index.php?post_type=product&feed=$matches[1]\";
s:41:\"letterwebshop/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$\";
s:44:\"index.php?post_type=product&feed=$matches[1]\";
s:33:\"letterwebshop/page/([0-9]{1,})/?$\";
s:45:\"index.php?post_type=product&paged=$matches[1]\";
As you can see, the shop page url should be '/letterwebshop' but when the problem occurs, it is '/shop'.
Mutual plugins between the two websites:
- ACF / ACF PRO
- MC4WP
- Mollie Payments for WooCommerce
- Woocommerce
- WCML
- Wordfence
- WPML
- Yoast SEO
These are all the mutual plugins that call flush_rewrite_rules():
- ACF (Pro)
- WooCommerce
- WCML
- Wordfence
- WPML String translation
- Yoast SEO
These plugins also call flush_rewrite_rules(), but only on the first site:
- Ninja forms
- WP Migrate DB
Is one of these plugin the cause of this problem? As the problem is random and the status is 200 OK, it is hard to monitor, and frustrating for my clients.
My issue is different than the one in your link. The rules in my .htaccess file were not changed. Only the rules in the database (wp_options > rewrite_rules) were changed.
The snippet you provided in the link, seems to be fixing a problem with the language folder being added or not added. In this case, the problem is that the `product_base` or `product_rewrite_slug` is incorrectly set to 'shop' instead of our custom base ('letterwebshop' in my example).
Hello,
My name is Carlos and I will continue working on this ticket
I kindly ask you to follow these steps to rule out some possible causes:
- Create a full backup of the site
- Go to Plugins -> Add new -> Commercial tab -> Check for updates -> Update the WPML plugins to the latest version
- Update any other plugin or theme that might be outdated
- Flush any cache memory that might exists
- Go to Woocommerce -> Woocommerce Multilingual & Multicurrency -> Status tab -> Fix any issue that might appear in the first two sections
- Go to Woocommerce -> Woocommerce Multilingual & Multicurrency -> Shop URLs tab -> Make sure at least the first 4 slugs are translated
- Go to Settings -> Permalinks -> Re-save the permalinks
- Double-check if the issue disappeared
Could you tell me the results of the steps described above?
Thanks for your reply. What you are suggesting is a temporary solution. I can temporarily fix the problem by resaving the permalinks, but the problem re-occurs after an indefinite amount of time.
TBH, I'm not sure this is caused by WPML or WCML. But I saw a lot of similar tickets on this support forum, so I thought there might be a link. It might also be link to Yoast SEO, or a combination of WC + WPML + Yoast.
The steps I recommended contain more than just re-saving the permalink. Updating the WPML plugins and checking the configuration in Woocommerce Multilingual & Multicurrency is very important in this scenario.
Could you run the steps I described and let me know the results? Or do you need more assistance on my side to run these steps? I will be more than happy to check the configuration on your site 🙂
