“critical error on website” only on homepage

Hey Ismael. Sorry for my late reply. But I found out that the problem might have to do with the Rankmath plugin, although I’m not sure. The following happened:

I’ve duplicated the homepage, like you said. After that I was able to edit the duplicate, but still not the original homepage. I then changed the WordPress title ‘Home’ of my original homepage into ‘Home2’ and changed the slug into ‘home2’. After that I changed the title of the duplicate homepage ‘Home (copy)’ into ‘Home’ and changed the slug to ‘home’ and I published the page.

First I got a notification in WordPress backend from Rankmath that a slug was changed and that I could set a new redirection. I deleted my original homepage and deleted the redirection, associated with that old homepage, in Rankmath. It didn’t go smooth. I can’t recall exactly, but the notification kept coming, although I clicked it away. After that I checked the title and slug from the new homepage again and everything seemed fine.

I now CAN edit the new homepage, but when viewing my homepage in a browser I get a critical error: “There has been a critical error on this website.” The only solution is disabling Rankmath, then the homepage works fine again. I only have a few plugins. I have deactivated all and then reactivated each one individually. Only Rankmath gave this critical error.

I don’t understand what went wrong. I’ve used Rankmath (free) without problems for two months, but now it suddenly causes a critical error. Somehow I think I messed up with changing slugs or redirections, but I don’t know how. But there’s also the weird problem that started it all: not being able to edit the original homepage, but being able to edit the duplicate.

Because the problem now seems to be related to Rankmath, I have contacted their Support. So I sent them the error log and I’m waiting for their reply. I will come back to you when I have more answers. Could you keep this topic open for now please?

Hi Ismael. The error log only has a few entries:

[31-Oct-2024 21:27:32 UTC] Cron reschedule event error for hook: action_scheduler_run_queue, Error code: invalid_schedule, Error message: Event schedule does not exist., Data: {"schedule":"every_minute","args":["WP Cron"],"interval":60}
[31-Oct-2024 22:01:39 UTC] Cron reschedule event error for hook: action_scheduler_run_queue, Error code: invalid_schedule, Error message: Event schedule does not exist., Data: {"schedule":"every_minute","args":["WP Cron"],"interval":60}
[01-Nov-2024 03:53:03 UTC] Automatic updates starting...
[01-Nov-2024 03:53:04 UTC] Automatic updates complete.

Hi Rikard, thanks for your reply.

It actually was the error log: the file ‘debug.log’ in wp-content folder. That’s the file you mean, right? I only set up debugging in WordPress after the reply from Rankmath, so that was the reason that the log only contained one line. I don’t know how to upload the debug.log file here, but it still hasn’t many entries. I’ll paste them here:

[31-Oct-2024 21:27:32 UTC] Cron reschedule event error for hook: action_scheduler_run_queue, Error code: invalid_schedule, Error message: Event schedule does not exist., Data: {"schedule":"every_minute","args":["WP Cron"],"interval":60}
[31-Oct-2024 22:01:39 UTC] Cron reschedule event error for hook: action_scheduler_run_queue, Error code: invalid_schedule, Error message: Event schedule does not exist., Data: {"schedule":"every_minute","args":["WP Cron"],"interval":60}
[01-Nov-2024 03:53:03 UTC] Automatic updates starting...
[01-Nov-2024 03:53:04 UTC] Automatic updates complete.
[01-Nov-2024 15:34:42 UTC] Automatic updates starting...
[01-Nov-2024 15:34:43 UTC] Automatic updates complete.
[02-Nov-2024 03:41:20 UTC] Automatic updates starting...
[02-Nov-2024 03:41:21 UTC] Automatic updates complete.
[02-Nov-2024 08:20:28 UTC] Cron reschedule event error for hook: action_scheduler_run_queue, Error code: invalid_schedule, Error message: Event schedule does not exist., Data: {"schedule":"every_minute","args":["WP Cron"],"interval":60}
[02-Nov-2024 08:39:38 UTC] Cron reschedule event error for hook: action_scheduler_run_queue, Error code: invalid_schedule, Error message: Event schedule does not exist., Data: {"schedule":"every_minute","args":["WP Cron"],"interval":60}
[02-Nov-2024 15:37:22 UTC] Automatic updates starting...
[02-Nov-2024 15:37:23 UTC] Automatic updates complete.
[03-Nov-2024 03:38:07 UTC] Automatic updates starting...
[03-Nov-2024 03:38:07 UTC] Automatic updates complete.

In the meantime Rankmath replied to my problem and they solved it. Their reply:

The issue is caused by a corrupted schema on your homepage. We have gone ahead and removed it and added a new Article schema with the default settings. Perhaps the former schema article schema on the homepage was corrupted during the duplication process. We removed that schema and created a new one. Regarding the debug log error with action_scheduler_run_queue, it’s likely unrelated to the schema issue. However, if you see this error persist, we recommend checking with your hosting provider as it could be linked to WordPress scheduling tasks.

Now my homepage works flawlessly again. But in the meantime I realised something. I built my new website with the Enfold theme a few months ago. I can remember that I had this original issue before, the issue I mention in my opening post here (not being able to edit homepage and being forced to duplicate the homepage). As I think of it, I don’t think I was even using Rankmath at that time. The issue was that I suddenly couldn’t open my homepage in the backend editor anymore. All other pages I still was able to edit. The solution back then was to duplicate the homepage. That went without problems. But when the issue came up again a few days ago, I tried the same solution: duplicating the homepage. But this time I used Rankmath and it all went wrong. Perhaps it was my own mistake, because after duplicating I messed around with the slugs of the original home page and the duplicate. I may have broken something. Or maybe Rankmath has a problem with duplicating a homepage, I don’t know.

Anyway, thanks to the Rankmath support everything is well again. But my original problem, that started it all (not being able to edit homepage and being forced to duplicate the homepage) still worries me. But since everything is ok now, I can’t deal with that.

Maybe you have an idea what the cause of the original problem was? Maybe an insight if the above mentioned debug log error with action_scheduler_run_queue is related?

Thank you Ismael. This topic can be closed for now.