Fatal Error during Installation/Activation

Hi @planeman and thanks for reaching out. Sorry to hear that you’re having issues getting the Site Kit plugin installed and activated.

The error you’re encountering may indicate that an something went wrong during a plugin update, or the default Site Kit files were modified. It could have been something as simple as a temporary hosting issue during an update, or a shared hosting PHP update.

Have you tried to uninstall the Site Kit plugin before installing once more? Note that if you have issues uninstalling the plugin you can manually remove or rename the Site Kit plugin directory in order to render it deactivated. You’ll find the Site Kit plugin directory on a typical WordPress install by visiting “/wp-content/plugins/google-site-kit”.

Please inform me how you get on after uninstalling and reinstalling once more. If the same occurs please share your Site Health information via this form and I can look into this further for you.

Greetings, Adam;

Thanks for getting back to me.

I was able to uninstall the plug-in and attempt to reinstall it, without success. I received a server error message again. I uninstalled it a second time, and verified it had been deleted by examining the directory structure. It’s gone.

I did complete and submit the WP Site Health Information form as you requested. I hope this contains useful information to help is get to the bottom of the issue.

Thanks, once again!

Hello, again Adam;

Interestingly, I received another similar error when updating a totally different plug in. I was doing the update in response to one of the messages I noted during the Site Health check. I’m becoming suspicious that the errors I am seeing are related.

This is the error text:

Update failed: The page cannot be displayed because an internal server error has occurred.

The update I was attempting was for a plugin called

Starter Templates

by Brainstorm Force, part of the Astra family of theme-related content.

I’m providing this for you in the event it is a clue to deciphering what’s happening with this site.

@planeman thank you for all the useful information. Because you are also having issues updating other plugins and looking at the error message you have kindly provided this looks to be hosting/server related and not Site Kit specific.

Would it be possible for you to create a fresh new WordPress site on the same host try installing Site Kit? If you get the same issue once more then this would point to this being a hosting issue and I would advise at that point making contact with your host to see if they can identify the cause here.

If you can install Site Kit on the fresh site then let me know and we can continue to troubleshoot this.

Hi Adam,

I want to shift the troubleshooting back over to GoDaddy before I start creating additional websites to troubleshoot this issue. I’m spending an inordinate amount of time with this and need to pare down how long I’m spending on it. I will keep you posted in this thread so that it doesn’t go dormant.

Adam;

I have spent hours with GoDaddy. Here is a snippet of a vary long chat:

“I undersatnd your point. I just checked with my team and they investigated on this issue on parent server and finally noticed that This is MYSQL compataibility issue.

Advise that the wordpress 5.9 requires at least MySQL 5.7 or higher.

The plesk mysql version is only 5.5 and you cant request to get this higher at least for now until we roll out 5.7 on Plesk,”

Does this explain the issue? And if so, is there a downgrade path for me to revert the WordPress installation and plugins to a compatible version with MySQL 5.5? I can now provide every version of the server-side software if that helps.

Thanks!

• This reply was modified 3 years ago by planeman.

@planeman thank you for clarifying and sharing your discussion with your host. Unfortunately this falls out of the scope of the Site Kit plugin and we are limited to support for the plugin.

This would be an issue for you to continue discussions on with your hosting provider to hopefully find a solution so that you can use the plugins you desire on your site. We are unable to advise on downgrading versions of software and plugins.

Do you have other hosting plans with GoDaddy or elsewhere? That way you could migrate your site to a plan that has all the minimum requirements needed to run the plugins but this option is entire up to you and we are unable to help further.

If you do manage to get the Site Kit plugin installed and have any further questions or issue with the plugin then we will be more than happy to help you.

Greetings once again,

With assistance from GoDaddy I have moved from a Plesk hosting environment to cPanel, and noted an immediate improvement in performance. Additionally, I can install and activate plug-ins including Site Kit with no issue.

However, I now get an error message as follows, specific to Site Kit:

Your site may not be ready for Site Kit

Site Kit cannot access the WordPress REST API. Please ensure it is enabled on your site.

I checked Site Health and came back with a related issue after the scan:

The REST API is one way WordPress, and other applications, communicate with the server. One example is the block editor screen, which relies on this to display, and save, your posts and pages.

The REST API call gave the following unexpected result: (404) <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>File Not Found</title> <meta http-equiv=”content-type” content=”text/html; charset=utf-8″ > <meta name=”viewport” content=”width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0″> <style type=”text/css”> body { background-color: #eee; } body, h1, p { font-family: “Helvetica Neue”, “Segoe UI”, Segoe, Helvetica, Arial, “Lucida Grande”, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; margin: 0; padding: 0; text-align: center; } .container { margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 177px; max-width: 1170px; padding-right: 15px; padding-left: 15px; } .row:before, .row:after { display: table; content: ” “; } .col-md-6 { width: 50%; } .col-md-push-3 { margin-left: 25%; } h1 { font-size: 48px; font-weight: 300; margin: 0 0 20px 0; } .lead { font-size: 21px; font-weight: 200; margin-bottom: 20px; } p { margin: 0 0 10px; } a { color: #3282e6; text-decoration: none; } </style> </head> <body> <div class=”container text-center” id=”error”> <svg height=”100″ width=”100″> <polygon points=”50,25 17,80 82,80″ stroke-linejoin=”round” style=”fill:none;stroke:#ff8a00;stroke-width:8″ /> <text x=”42″ y=”74″ fill=”#ff8a00″ font-family=”sans-serif” font-weight=”900″ font-size=”42px”>!</text> </svg> <div class=”row”> <div class=”col-md-12″> <div class=”main-icon text-warning”><span class=”uxicon uxicon-alert”></span></div> <h1>File not found (404 error)</h1> </div> </div> <div class=”row”> <div class=”col-md-6 col-md-push-3″> <p class=”lead”>If you think what you’re looking for should be here, please contact the site owner.</p> </div> </div> </div> </body> </html> .

Unsure where to go from here. Is this another server-side issue, or is this a WordPress plugin issue?

Hi @planeman and thanks for the update. Glad to hear that switching over to cPanel has helped you in being able to install plugins on your site.

Site Kit cannot access the WordPress REST API. Please ensure it is enabled on your site.

As explained here, this error message indicates that Site Kit cannot connect to the Google Search Console API.

This could be due to a plugin conflict which you could check by following our troubleshooting steps here.

However, this could also be another one to discuss with your hosting provider to check if they’re blocking the ability to make external API requests.

Please do let me know how you get on with this and if there is anything else I can help you with.

The WordPress genies must have been at work over the last day or so. Site Kit now works just fine, and the previous error has mysteriously disappeared. Wish I could point to a solution for anyone else who might experience this bit of trouble, but I can’t.

Thanks for all your assistance!

@planeman Glad to hear that your issue has been resolved and that you can now use Site Kit. No problem at all and please feel free to create any new topics in future should you have any further issues with your Site Kit and we will be happy to help.