Otter blocks look broken after an update

If your blocks suddenly display incorrectly after updating Otter Blocks, WordPress, your theme, or another plugin, the cause is usually stale generated styles or a conflict with another plugin rather than a problem with Otter Blocks itself. Common symptoms include:

• Sections or effects showing as plain white backgrounds, or fonts and layouts changing unexpectedly.
• Blocks displaying This block has encountered an error and cannot be previewed in the editor while the front end still looks correct.
• An empty patterns library in the Design Library.

Work through these steps in order:

1. Regenerate styles and clear caches. If blocks look unstyled on the front end, use Regenerate Styles in the plugin's settings to rebuild Otter's CSS files, then clear any caching plugin, host, or CDN caches. See the settings reference for the setting location and How to clear the cache in WordPress.

2. Install available updates. Update WordPress, Otter Blocks, your theme, and your other active plugins, then recheck. A conflict introduced by an outdated third-party plugin is often resolved once that plugin is updated.

3. Test for a plugin conflict. If the problem remains, follow The product doesn't work as expected - Troubleshooting guide to isolate the conflicting plugin. Run deactivation tests on a staging site, or make a current backup before changing plugins on a live site.

📝 Note: If you run the standalone Gutenberg plugin (the beta feature plugin, separate from the block editor built into WordPress), try deactivating it. Its pre-release changes to the block editor can conflict with Otter Blocks and other block plugins, which can cause editor preview errors and a missing patterns library.