blog has gone down with 'Fatal Error' message

Hi there,

Do you have access to the FTP? I would recommend opening the file in question, finding that function, and making sure the syntax is correct.

Were any adjustments made recently to your code? Are you working in a child theme? I ask because it is best practice not to touch any core WP files and to work within a child theme. If that is what you or your programmers are doing then the error is most likely in the child theme but affecting the taxonomy.php. So I would look for a function in your child theme (functions.php hopefully) that does something with object labels or taxonomies, check the syntax, or comment it out. See if that fixes the errors.

thanks for the response. I don’t have access to the FTP as far as I am aware – my main problem right now is I can’t even get into the site to try & fix anything. I’ve made no adjustments to the core code & yes, it is a child theme. I’m afraid I only have really basic knowledge (and have no programmers!) so wouldn’t touch anything.

Hmm. How about reaching out to your hosting company? There is a good chance they can restore your site to a time it was working. Ask them to restore it to yesterday’s back up (if yesterday was working). Or the most recent back up they have. After that run a malware scan because if you didn’t change anything, it shouldn’t have gone down.

You should have a way to access the files, whether that’s through a file manager or FTP, it’s just a matter of figuring out how ?? Who do you host your website with?

Do you know if you have automatic updates on for WordPress?

thanks both. the site is hosted with Hostgator. I had already submitted a ticket to them & am waiting to hear back, so will see what they say – thanks for the suggestion of restoring a backup. I do have auto updates on for WordPress & I had installed extra anti spam etc etc plugins.