WordPress White Screen Of Death Fix (tutorial)
Posted byKeenweb inGuide on October 12, 2015 with0 Comment
If you are the owner of a WordPress blog or website, then throughout the years you definitely encountered the WordPress White Screen of Death. This issue can be a very frustrating one because it generates a wide range of errors and an uncomfortable situation that you just want to avoid at all costs. The White Screen of Death will usually lock you out of the WordPress panel, but the downside here is that the error doesn’t even display any message, so you are most of the time left clueless in regards to what happened.
Causes
One of the main causes of the WordPress White Screen of Death is the fact that you exhausted the memory limit. There are numerous things that can lead to that, such as a bad theme that doesn’t have optimized code, or a plugin that most likely causes memory leaks. In addition to that, another issue might be related to the web hosting server which might not have enough processing power allocated for your website. Troubleshooting is imperative, and a good way to see if it’s an issue with the web host is to see if the problem appears to your other sites as well. If the issue appears only to a single site, then you surely need to disable plugins or themes for that site.
Repairing the WordPress White Screen of Death
A good method of repairing the White Screen of Death in WordPress is to edit the configuration file and then placing it into debug mode, as this is the only way to see the error and what causes it. At this time, you will be able to pinpoint which is the plugin that causes the issue. You can enable the debug mode by adding the following lines to the wp-config files:
define (‘WP_DEBUG’, true);
define (‘WP_DEBUG_LOG’, true);
Increasing memory
If you have too many plugins, then a very good idea is to increase the memory limit, because the main cause of your WordPress White Screen of Death might be the exhausted memory. Increasing the PHP memory in WordPress is very easy to perform, and the results are well worth it.
Disabling plugins
In many cases, even if you increase the memory limit this issue will still be there. This is why you need to continue troubleshooting, although another very common issue comes in the form of troublesome plugins or themes. Sometimes, you might want to disable all the plugins, which might be a very tedious job. You need to stop the web app in the control panel, login to FTP, then rename all the plugins and themes manually, as well as the themes. When you turn back to the WordPress admin panel, then you will find all these plugins as well as themes deactivated and you can add new ones if you want.
Failed updates
Believe it or not, but the White Screen of Death can also appear due to a failed WordPress update or plugin update. Fixing this is easy, you need to download the update and use FTP to upload it to your site. This will overwrite the existing files and solve the problem.
Conclusion
There are a variety of solutions that you can use in order to fix the White Screen of Death for WordPress. If nothing can be solved at all, then a drastic solution will be to reinstall WordPress on your website. No matter what solution you choose to apply though, it’s very important to always make sure that you create a backup for the existing data, as this should keep your data safe no matter if you encounter issues.
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