Troubleshooting

A critical error appears after updating

Fixed in 2.8.3 — update to that version or later and it will not happen again.

Versions before 2.8.3 could crash on the first page load after an update, but only on sites with a published privacy policy page. Because the update routine never finished, the error repeated on every page load instead of clearing on its own.

If a site is currently affected:

1. Connect over FTP or your host's file manager and rename wp-content/plugins/multi-vendor-quote-request to anything else — for example multi-vendor-quote-request-off. The site comes straight back up, with the plugin inactive.
2. Rename the folder back to multi-vendor-quote-request.
3. Go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin, choose the 2.8.3 zip, and select Replace current with uploaded.

Nothing is lost. Quote requests live in their own database table and settings in their own option — neither is touched by deactivating, renaming, or reinstalling the plugin.

Quote emails aren't arriving

Work through these in order:

1. Install an SMTP plugin. The single most common cause. WordPress's built-in mail is unreliable and often silently dropped by the recipient's provider. FluentSMTP and WP Mail SMTP are both good, and free.
2. Check the spam folder, especially for the customer-facing emails.
3. Confirm the automation is enabled. Each one has its own on/off switch — see Email Automations.
4. On Voxel sites, check the right screen. Notifications moved to Voxel → Settings → App Events in 2.8.1. If the settings under Quote Requests → Settings appear to have no effect, that's why — they're kept for reference but no longer used on Voxel sites.

The customer dashboard is empty

The customer dashboard matches requests to the logged-in user by email address. A request submitted with a different address than the one on the account won't appear.

This is usually a guest who typed a different email than the one they later registered with. Two things help:

• Turn on Lock Name & Email for Logged-in Customers (Settings → General), so logged-in customers can't submit under a different address.
• For existing requests, correct the email on the request itself from Quote Requests → All Quotes.

Emails link to the wrong page, or the dashboard badge is missing

Set Customer Dashboard Page URL and Vendor Dashboard Page URL under Settings → Emails.

The plugin auto-detects these by finding the page containing the shortcode, which fails when the dashboard is built with a page-builder widget rather than a raw shortcode. Setting the URLs manually fixes both the email links and the unread-count badges in your navigation menu.

The vendor's city isn't showing

The Vendor City/Location Field Key must match how your theme actually stores the field. It works with either a custom field or a taxonomy — Voxel's own "City" field type creates a taxonomy, which is a common surprise.

You don't have to guess: with a Vendor Profile Post Type set, the settings screen lists every field and taxonomy it can actually find on your profile posts, directly beneath the setting. Use one of those.

The vendor shows as a username instead of their business name

Set Vendor Profile Post Type (Settings → General) to the slug of your vendor profile post type — partner, for example. The profile's title then replaces the WordPress username everywhere: dashboards, quote views, and emails. See Multi-Vendor Mode.

A dashboard or button renders with stray markup

Pasting a shortcode into an Elementor Text Editor runs it through a content filter that can inject extra tags. Use the matching Elementor widget instead — Customer Quotes Dashboard, Vendor Quotes Dashboard, Admin Quotes Dashboard, or Quote Button. The widgets bypass the filter completely and add styling controls.

The floating button count looks wrong

The count reflects the visitor's current session. If it looks stale, load any page once — the badge re-syncs from the server on every page load, and a leftover count from an expired quote clears itself.

Still stuck?

Open a ticket from your account at codewattz.com. What helps most, by far, is the actual error text rather than a screenshot of the generic "critical error" page:

• Turn on debugging by adding define( 'WP_DEBUG', true ); to wp-config.php, reproduce the problem, and copy the error that appears.
• Or send the last lines of wp-content/debug.log, or your host's PHP error log.

A real stack trace usually turns a week of guessing into a same-day fix.