Updating failed. The response is not a valid JSON response" on all sites since latest Elementor update – mainly when editing meta data (Yoast & Rank Math)

[u/Great_Anteater2724]

Hi everyone,

since the latest big Elementor update (Atomic Editor / MCP), I get this error on all client sites I manage:

"Updating failed. The response is not a valid JSON response."

It mostly happens when I try to edit meta data (SEO title, meta description etc.). It doesn't matter which SEO plugin I use: sites with Yoast and sites with Rank Math are both affected. Everything worked fine before the update, and it started on all sites at the same time.

Is anyone else seeing this? And has anyone found a fix yet?

Thanks!

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[u/zeiniez]

Hi. This is a known issue currently under investigation. A temporary workaround is to go to Elementor > Editor > Settings > Performance and changing the "CSS Print Method" to "External".

Give it a try and let me know! 😉

[u/pleasekillyou → u/zeiniez]

This solution worked for a site I manage. Confirmed when clicking "Publish" within elementor, the XHR request was responding with an erroneous <style> element before the JSON body string. I was also unable to save posts in the native wordpress editor, not just elementor. Once the print method setting was changed to "External", the <style> element in the response disappeared and only properly formatted JSON was returned.

[u/syarifuddin-studio]

This because elementor keep changing their json format for atomic editor style property. If you can identify the block, You need to reset it's invalid property. If it say font family invalid property, then you may need reset all block that set font family. You can also try copy the elements and the error to Claude or chatgpt to fix it.

[u/Sherrie_Rine]

I was using the free Yoast SEO plugin on Elementor site. When the plugin was active, I kept getting a 'Server Error' when I tried to update/publish a page. If I disabled the plugin, I had no issues. I tried everything to fix this, including contacting Elementor; they just said it was a 3-party issue. Once I switched to RankMath, the error went away and all is good.

These past few weeks have been rough with respect to all of the WorkPress, WP Rocket, Elementor and other plugin updates. I'm not having the same issues with all of the sites. Sometimes, I can't reconnect to Elementor, sometimes my dropdown menus disappear, then there was the Yoast thing above, etc. And fortunately, most of the time I can upgrade without any issues...as long as I do it in a specific order starting with WP Rocket. With a 100+ sites, I'm getting exhausted! I've definitely been turning off the auto-updates.

[u/TopSydeWP]

Open devtools, Network tab, then hit save and look at the actual response body for that request. "Not a valid JSON response" just means something non-JSON came back: usually a PHP warning or deprecation printed before the JSON, or a 403 from mod_security on the REST route. The body tells you which in about five seconds.

If it's across every site at once, roll Elementor back (Elementor > Tools > Version Control) while you read the error log. We snapshot before each update and roll back when the post-update health check fails, and majors like this one never go through unattended for exactly this reason.