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Troubleshooting Common MainWP Child Plugin Update and Connection Issues

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

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Managing multiple WordPress sites with MainWP is a powerful strategy, but sometimes the MainWP Child plugin itself can cause headaches. Based on community reports, this guide covers the most frequent update and connection problems and how to resolve them.

Common Issues and Their Solutions

1. PHP Version Compatibility Errors

Symptoms: After an update, your site throws a PHP Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_STRING or a blank white screen. This is often accompanied by a fatal error mentioning an exhausted memory size.

Cause: The MainWP Child plugin requires a minimum of PHP 5.6, with PHP 7.x or higher strongly recommended. Older, unsupported PHP versions (like 5.3 or 5.2) cannot parse the modern code in newer plugin versions.

Solution: Contact your web hosting provider and request an upgrade to a supported PHP version (7.4 or 8.x). This is critical not just for MainWP compatibility but for your site's overall security and performance.

2. Failed or Stalled Updates

Symptoms: The update process hangs on "Upgrading," a plugin is deleted from the child site after a failed update, or the dashboard insists an update is needed even after it appears to complete.

Causes: This can be caused by various factors, including temporary WordPress.org repository syncing issues, low PHP memory limits, or conflicts with other plugins.

Solutions:

  • Check Repository Status: Sometimes the official plugin repository experiences syncing delays. If an update just became available, wait a few hours and try again.
  • Increase Memory Limits: Fatal errors about "allowed memory size exhausted" indicate your PHP or WordPress memory limit is too low. Increase these limits in your wp-config.php file (define( 'WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '256M' );).
  • Check for Conflicts: Temporarily disable other plugins, especially security or backup plugins like Wordfence or UpdraftPlus, to see if the update completes successfully.
  • Manual Update: As a last resort, manually update the plugin by downloading the correct version from the WordPress plugin repository and replacing the files via FTP/SFTP.

3. Connection "Public Key Already Exists" Error

Symptoms: After updating the MainWP Child plugin, your site becomes disconnected from the dashboard. Attempting to reconnect may result in an error stating the public key already exists. Reconnecting might work briefly before the site disconnects again after a sync.

Cause: A bug in a specific plugin version (e.g., 4.1.6) can break the secure connection handshake between the child site and the dashboard.

Solution: The development team typically releases a patch very quickly for these regressions. Update the MainWP Child plugin to the latest available version. If a new version is not yet available, you may need to temporarily roll back to the previous working version until a fix is released.

4. Plugin Conflicts After Update

Symptoms: After a MainWP Child update, another plugin (e.g., SendGrid, Postman SMTP, UpdraftPlus) starts throwing errors, disappears from the plugin list, or stops functioning correctly. A common error is wp_mail has been declared by another process or plugin.

Cause: Changes in the MainWP Child plugin can sometimes inadvertently conflict with how other plugins operate, especially those that modify core WordPress functions.

Solution:

  • Check the support forums for the conflicting plugin to see if others are reporting the same issue.
  • Ensure all your plugins, including the MainWP Dashboard and extensions, are updated to their latest versions, as compatibility fixes are often included.
  • For specific conflicts like UpdraftPlus being hidden, this can be a leftover setting from the MainWP UpdraftPlus extension. Check the extension's settings on your dashboard to ensure it is not configured to hide the plugin on child sites if you are not using it.

General Troubleshooting Tips

  • Always Back Up: Before updating any core management tool like the MainWP Child plugin, ensure you have a recent, reliable backup of your site.
  • Update the Dashboard First: As a best practice, always keep your MainWP Dashboard updated before updating the Child plugins on your managed sites.
  • Check Requirements: Before updating, verify that your server environment (PHP, MySQL, memory limits) meets the system requirements for the new version.

By following these steps, you can resolve most common issues that arise after updating the MainWP Child plugin. If you encounter a persistent problem not covered here, detailed information about your server environment and exact error messages is crucial for finding a solution.

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