Jetpack Image CDN Causing Elementor Editor Crashes: What Site Owners Need to Know

If your Elementor editor keeps crashing or failing to load, the culprit may not be Elementor itself. Recent reports show that Jetpack’s Image CDN (also known as Site Accelerator) is triggering fatal errors inside the WordPress editor, leaving many site owners frustrated.

What’s Happening

When Jetpack’s Image CDN filter tries to rewrite image HTML in Elementor’s Text Editor or Tabs widgets, it sometimes processes malformed or empty tags. This leads to a fatal error in WordPress’ HTML Tag Processor:

PHP Fatal error: WP_HTML_Tag_Processor::get_updated_html(): Return value must be of type string, null returned

As a result, the Elementor editor crashes and you’re unable to edit your page.

How to Fix It

The good news: the issue is not permanent and has a simple workaround.

1. Disable Jetpack Image CDN
   • In your WordPress dashboard, go to Jetpack → Performance.
   • Toggle “Enable site accelerator / Image CDN” OFF.
   • Reload Elementor — the editor should now work without errors.
2. Disable Image CDN Only in Admin If you still want Jetpack’s performance boost on the frontend but need Elementor stable in the backend, add this small snippet as a Must-Use (MU) plugin:

<?php
/**
 * Disable Jetpack Image CDN in admin/editor to prevent Elementor crashes.
 */
add_action('init', function () {
    if (is_admin()) {
        add_filter('jetpack_photon_enabled', '__return_false', 99);
        add_filter('jetpack_site_speed_image_cdn', '__return_false', 99);
    }
});

2. Save it in wp-content/mu-plugins/disable-jetpack-image-cdn.php.
3. Keep Plugins Updated
   • Update Jetpack regularly, as Automattic has been working on fixes for this issue.
   • Update Elementor and your other plugins as well for compatibility.

What About Other Errors in the Logs?

• Translation loading notices (…was triggered too early) are warnings introduced in WordPress 6.7. They won’t crash Elementor but can clutter logs.
• Dynamic property deprecations (e.g. from Elegro Payment) are PHP 8.2+ warnings. These also don’t block Elementor but should be fixed by plugin updates.

Final Thoughts

If your Elementor editor suddenly stops working and your logs mention WP_HTML_Tag_Processor or Jetpack’s Image CDN, you’ve likely run into this conflict. Disabling Jetpack Image CDN in the admin is the fastest way to get Elementor working again, while still enjoying CDN performance on the frontend.

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