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Resolving Common MainWP Child Plugin Errors: A Troubleshooting Guide

36 threads Sep 16, 2025 Plugin → Mainwp child – securely connects to the mainwp dashboard to manage multiple sites

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If you manage multiple WordPress sites, the MainWP Child plugin is an essential tool for connecting them to your central dashboard. However, like any complex plugin, it can sometimes run into conflicts or generate errors. Based on community reports and common issues, this guide will help you diagnose and fix the most frequent problems encountered with the MainWP Child plugin.

Common Issues and Their Solutions

1. PHP Version Compatibility Errors

Many errors stem from using outdated PHP versions. The MainWP Child plugin has historically introduced functions that require PHP 5.5 or higher, which can cause fatal errors on older versions.

  • Symptoms: "The site is experiencing technical difficulties" message, sites going down after an update, or blank admin screens.
  • Solution: Upgrade your PHP version to at least 7.4 (the current recommended version for WordPress). Check with your hosting provider for instructions on how to change your PHP version.

2. Deprecation and Compatibility Warnings

As PHP evolves, older functions are deprecated. The plugin has shown warnings related to these changes, especially on PHP 8.0 and higher.

  • Symptoms: Warnings like "Using ${var} in strings is deprecated" or notices about undefined indexes appearing in your error logs or on the frontend.
  • Solution: Ensure you are running the latest version of the MainWP Child plugin, as the development team regularly addresses these warnings. If warnings persist and your server's display_errors is enabled, consider turning off error display in your production environment via your php.ini or server configuration.

3. Plugin and Theme Conflicts

The plugin can sometimes conflict with other code, leading to fatal errors or site crashes.

  • Symptoms: A 500 Internal Server Error or White Screen of Death (WSOD) that resolves when you deactivate either MainWP Child or another specific plugin (e.g., WooCommerce Extra Product Options, Gravity Forms, Monster Insights, BackWPUp).
  • Solution:
    1. Deactivate all plugins on the child site except MainWP Child.
    2. If the error stops, reactivate your plugins one by one to identify the conflicting one.
    3. Check for updates for both MainWP Child and the conflicting plugin, as conflicts are often patched in new releases.
    4. If the problem continues, you may need to temporarily keep one of the plugins deactivated until a compatibility update is released.

4. False Positive Malware Alerts

Security scanners sometimes flag parts of the plugin's code as potential threats.

  • Symptoms: Alerts from Wordfence, Quttera, or other scanners mentioning encoded code or backdoors in files like mainwp-child.php or class-mainwp-child.php.
  • Solution: These are almost always false positives. Compare the hash of the file on your server to the original file in the official WordPress.org plugin repository. If they match, you can safely ignore the alert. If they do not match, your site may have been compromised, and you should replace the plugin files with fresh copies from the repository.

5. Clone and Backup Operation Failures

Users sometimes encounter errors during clone or backup processes.

  • Symptoms: Contradictory size estimates, unhandled errors, or messages stating "the restore process will more than likely fail."
  • Solution: These issues are often related to server resource limits (PHP memory, execution time) or large database sizes. Try increasing your PHP memory limit and max execution time. For very large sites, consider using a dedicated backup plugin before attempting the clone operation.

6. ModSecurity and .htaccess Issues

Server-level security rules can block the plugin's functionality, and in rare cases, updates have been known to modify the .htaccess file.

  • Symptoms: Inability to access the settings page (wp-admin/options-general.php?page=mainwp_child_tab) or a broken site after an update due to a truncated .htaccess file.
  • Solution: If you cannot access the settings page, contact your host and ask if ModSecurity (often with the OWASP rule set) is blocking the request. They may need to whitelist the rule. If your .htaccess file was cleared, you will need to restore it from a backup and re-save your permalink structure in Settings > Permalinks.

General Troubleshooting Steps

For any unexplained error, follow this basic checklist:

  1. Update Everything: Ensure WordPress, the MainWP Child plugin, your theme, and all other plugins are updated to their latest versions.
  2. Check Error Logs: Locate your server's PHP error log (often found in your hosting control panel) or enable WordPress debugging to get detailed error messages that can pinpoint the problem.
  3. Increase Resources: Temporarily increase your PHP memory limit and max execution time to see if resource constraints are causing the issue.
  4. Conflict Test: As described above, deactivate other plugins and switch to a default theme like Twenty Twenty-One to rule out conflicts.

By methodically working through these common problems, you can usually resolve issues and get your child sites securely connected to your MainWP dashboard again.

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