Elementor REST API Fix
Prevents Elementor from injecting stray CSS/HTML into WordPress REST API responses, fixing the "Response is not a valid JSON response" error in Gutenberg.
by Usman Tayyab · github.com/imuxmantayyab/elementor-rest-fix · website
Install
No release zip yet. The repository archive installs, but the folder name will carry the branch suffix and updates will not flow:
wp plugin install https://github.com/imuxmantayyab/elementor-rest-fix/archive/refs/heads/main.zipFixes the dreaded WordPress Gutenberg error:
"Updating Failed. Response is Not a Valid JSON Response" caused by Elementor injecting stray CSS/HTML into REST API responses.
📖 The Story Behind This Plugin
🛑 Act 1: The Frustration & The Wall
Meet Sarah. She is a content manager working against a strict launch deadline. She finishes editing an important landing page with the Gutenberg editor, clicks Update, and is hit with:
🔴 "Updating Failed. Response is Not a Valid JSON Response"
She frantically searches Google. Every forum post repeats the same generic checklist:
- "Re-save your permalinks" (Didn't work)
- "Clear your browser cache" (Didn't work)
- "Deactivate all plugins" (She can't — the site relies on Elementor!)
- "Check your SSL certificate" (Everything is green and valid)
Hours slip by. Over 99% of people facing this issue have no idea what is actually going on under the hood because the error message is vague and unhelpful.
🔍 Act 2: The Investigation & Mentorship
On our engineering team, a junior developer hit this exact same roadblock. Panicked and out of ideas, they brought it to me.
As Team Lead, instead of just taking over the keyboard, we turned this into a real-time debugging masterclass:
- Inspecting the Raw Response: We opened Chrome DevTools, navigated to the Network tab, and inspected the failing
/wp-json/wp/v2/pages/...request. - The Culprit: The response headers said
application/json, but the response body didn't start with{. Instead, Elementor had printed `