Learning

“Updating failed. The response is not a valid JSON response.”

Running into the “Updating failed. The response is not a valid JSON response” error when trying to edit content or upload media in WordPress can be a significant setback. This error blocks you from using the Block Editor properly, making it challenging to update or publish new content, and can seriously disrupt your site management process.

The most common fix is to re-save the permalinks within WordPress. However, after updating to the latest MAMP version, I encountered the same issue because MAMP, by default, does not enable mod_rewrite, which is essential for proper URL rewriting and clean permalinks in WordPress.

First, the most common way to fix this, the permalinks:

1) In your WordPress dashboard, go to Settings > Permalinks.
2) Scroll down and click Save Changes without making any edits.

This refreshes the permalink structure and can resolve issues with broken links or update errors. However, when using a new version of MAMP, this could also be the underlying cause of the issue.

To resolve this:

1) Navigate to APPLICATIONS/MAMP/CONF/APACHE/
2) Open the httpd.conf file in a text editor.
3) Find the following line:

#LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so

4) Uncomment it by removing the #:

LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so

5) Save the file and restart your MAMP server.

This ensures that mod_rewrite is active, allowing WordPress permalinks to function correctly, and typically resolves the error.