Common Issues

Site Won’t Start

Symptoms: Clicking “Start” doesn’t change the status, or the site immediately stops.

Solutions:

1. Check port conflicts — another application may be using port 80 or 3306. Stop any other web servers (Apache, MAMP, XAMPP) or database servers running on your machine.
2. Restart the Blaze server — stop all sites, quit Blaze, and relaunch.
3. Check logs — inspect the server logs for error details.

Custom Domain Not Working

Symptoms: Browser shows “can’t reach this site” for your .local domain.

Solutions:

1. Check the privileged helper — open Settings in Blaze and verify the privileged helper is installed. If not, reinstall it from there.
2. Verify hosts file — check that /etc/hosts contains an entry for your domain pointing to 127.0.0.1.
3. Flush DNS cache — run sudo dscacheutil -flushcache && sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder in Terminal.

HTTPS Certificate Warning

Symptoms: Browser shows a security warning for your .local site.

Solutions:

1. Trust the mkcert CA — Blaze uses mkcert to generate certificates. The root CA may need to be trusted in your system keychain. Blaze should do this automatically during setup, but if it didn’t, reinstall the privileged helper from Settings.

Component Download Fails

Symptoms: First-launch setup gets stuck or shows download errors.

Solutions:

1. Check internet connection — components are downloaded from GitHub. Verify you can access github.com.
2. Retry — click retry in the setup wizard. Downloads use exponential backoff for temporary failures.
3. Check disk space — server components need approximately 500 MB of free space.

Database Connection Error

Symptoms: WordPress shows “Error establishing a database connection.”

Solutions:

1. Ensure MariaDB is running — check the server status indicator in the Blaze sidebar.
2. Restart the site — stop and start the site again.
3. Check wp-config.php — verify the database credentials in ~/Sites/yoursite/wp-config.php match the database Blaze created.

PHP Errors or White Screen

Symptoms: Site shows a blank page or PHP error messages.

Solutions:

1. Check PHP version compatibility — some plugins require specific PHP versions. Try switching to a different PHP version.
2. Increase memory limit — go to the PHP Config tab and increase the memory limit.
3. Check PHP error logs — inspect the server logs for PHP-FPM errors.

Updater Not Working

Symptoms: Clicking “Update” does nothing, shows an error, or the update fails to install.

Solutions:

1. Download the latest version manually — go to github.com/wolfdevsllc/blaze/releases, download the latest Blaze.pkg, and run the installer. This replaces your existing installation and fixes most update issues.
2. Quit Blaze completely before running the installer (Cmd+Q, not just close the window).

Your sites, settings, and data are preserved — they’re stored separately from the app.