Carousel not working sometimes

Hi @monalisa1991

Unfortunately, this kind of error is difficult to sort out. But let’s try!

Are you able to reproduce the issue on demand? I know you said “sometimes” and “some users”, but does that mean that some users encounter the issue all the time or that all users are likely to encounter the issue from time to time? It would be useful to know if some users encounter the issue all the time, as this would mean that there is something specific causing the problem (for example a specific device or browser).

When the issue occurs, do the other sliders on the page not work as well, or just the first one?

Otherwise, try to disable Minify Css and Minify Js options of WP Fastest Cache. Is that helps?

hi @luk4

thank you so much for responding. I use two laptops and I am not able to recreate the issue. But whenever my manager tries to recreate it she is able to and she says some users have been facing the issue long back and for them it happens sometimes. Not always. Say once in two site visits.
I tried the cache settings. Minify js and minify css. i disabled them. But the manager is still facing the issue.

OK, thank you for the details!

Could you try to temporarily disable all the Jetpack plugins? While they are disabled, is your manager still facing the issue?

Also, are the other sliders on the page working when the first one are not?

hello @luk4

The issue is with all the three sliders. All the three don’t work during the issue.

By temporarily disable do you mean deactivate the jetpack plugins?

The issue is with all the three sliders. All the three don’t work during the issue.

Alright, good to know. Thank you!

By temporarily disable do you mean deactivate the jetpack plugins?

Yes, please. “Deactivate” all Jetpack plugins (in Plugins ? Installed Plugins) without deleting them. In fact, disable the WP Fastest Cache plugin in addition to the Jetpack plugins. Then see if the issue persists. If it does, reactivate all the plugins. If not, activate the plugins one by one (WP Fastest Cache last) and after each plugin activation, check whether the issue persists until you’ve identified the plugin causing it.

Hi @luk4

Apologies for what I am about to say. I asked the incharge for permission to deactivate and reactivate the jetpack and wp fastest cache. But she says it might break some features on the website permanently. She asked me to look for what happens to wordpress once we deactivate and reactivate jetpack and cache. To my dismay I didn’t find anything relevant. Can jetpack and cache actually break wordpress features permanently if we deactivate it for a while?

Please no need to apologize @monalisa1991, it’s perfectly normal to be worried about breaking your website. Rest assured though, deactivating (without deleting) a plugin doesn’t break the website permanently. It may, at worst, temporarily suspend functionality, styles or images, but everything will be restored when the plugin is reactivated.

Actually, this is a common troubleshooting process, as you can see here for example. It’s so common that forum volunteers even have a predefined answer for it. ??

That said, always make sure that you have a recent backup of your website and that you’re able to access its files and database by means other than the WordPress dashboard alone, i.e. usually through your hosting provider’s dashboard.

Finally, you might be more comfortable following the best practice of making changes to a staging website, not accessible to the public, and then replacing the production website with the staging version when everything is in order. However, this requires more steps, time, skills and/or tools. See: https://wpengine.com/resources/what-is-a-staging-site-why-have-one/

Hi @luk4

Thank you. The in charge doesn’t want to deactivate jetpack without backup and if backup, then restoring is a time consuming task for the people handling the hosting dashboard. Staging site is not an option for me since I don’t have access to all the necessary accounts and permissions. What do you suggest I do? I tried to tell people in the team who are getting the issue to use healthcheck plugin and figure out the plugin causing the issue since I could not reproduce the issue on my laptop.

Also by reactivating you simply mean to click the activate button after having deactivated it. I can use health check to see if disabling jetpack is not causing any issue on the site then I can convince the incharge to deactivate it and then activate it and check if the issue is gone. What do you think?

Hello @monalisa1991

First of all, I’m sorry that troubleshooting the issue is causing you so much… trouble. As I said in my first message, these kinds of bugs, which appear sometimes, are difficult to fix because we first have to identify the exact cause of the issue. And since there are literally dozens of possible reasons, we have to do a lot of trial and error until we finally find it, and that unfortunately takes time. Furthermore, doing this via a forum thread requires many messages and further increases the time needed. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still possible!

Then, it seems the website you’re working on is critical to your employer’s business, but doesn’t have the comprehensive basic maintenance and management tools these important websites need. Websites break down, databases get corrupted, data centers burn down, malicious hackers break into websites and so on. It’s normal, and it happens even to the best websites in the world. That’s why the person in charge of the website absolutely must be able to create and restore backups of the website with a single click and in no more than a few minutes, as well as create a staging version of the website if needed. If this isn’t possible at the moment, I would kindly suggest that you first address this issue by looking for a better hosting provider dedicated to WordPress. Then you’ll have all the peace of mind you need to work on your website in total safety.

Now, if you still want to pursue this further, please understand that disabling a few plugins for a few minutes is a common task and is only the first step of possibly many others. Also please note that deactivate and re-activating Jetpack or WP Fastest Cache will not in itself fix the issue. It will only let us know if the problem still occurs when they are deactivated (paused).

So to proceed, 1/ temporarily deactivate these plugins, 2/ see if the error is still there while they’re deactivated and 3/ yes, activate them again by clicking on the “activate” button on the plugins page.

Again, deactivating and reactivating a plugin is risk-free in itself, but as with any task on a website, my responsibility is to say that you should only do it if you’re able to restore a backup in the something going wrong.

If you definitely can’t deactivate/activate a plugin on the website, it will unfortunately be difficult to understand where the problem is coming from and fix it. There are other things you might want to check, though, like making sure WordPress core, themes and plugins are all up to date (but again, make sure you have a backup of the website before updating), trying to slightly edit the faulty homepage carousels via Elementor, trying to Regenerate CSS & Data in Elementor settings, asking people who encounter the issue if it also occurs on a hard refresh or when using a different browser like Firefox, etc.

Finally, I’m not sure which health check plugin you’re talking about. Is it this Health Check plugin and/or the similar built-in Site Health Screen? If so, it won’t be helpful in this case, I’m afraid, so there’s no need to install or use it.

hi @luk4

Thank you so much for taking the time and understanding the issue. It makes me so happy that people take time to help others. Yes we are stuck, can’t take backup and cannot deactivate Jetpack without backup. So we decided to let this be for now. I can’t express just how much grateful I am for people here trying to help. Thanks a lot. Loads of best wishes.

That’s very kind of you @monalisa1991 ?? Yes, helping each other is part of the FLOSS spirit, of which WordPress is a part ??

I hope to be more helpful next time.

Take care,

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