White Screen of Death on WordPress

You try to log into your WordPress website one day and white is all your see. No message, no error notifications. Nothing! Yikes!!! You think that it might be a mistake.. you try another browser.. and still you see that white screen of death. We all dread this sort of problem. Here are some things you might want to try:

Clear your browser caches. Some browsers like Chrome allow you to clear your browser in a certain time frame (past hour, day etc.)

Disable plugins

Your first step is to try disabling your WordPress plugins one by one and see if that solves the issue. This is due to the fact that nine times out of ten plugins are the culprit for login and white screen issues. You can disable them by renaming them via FTP. (Eg. Add an ending to each folder called “.disabled” or “.null.” Start with any caching plugins then go down the list and each time see if disabling that plugin resolves matters.

Disable Themes

You can also disable your current theme by renaming it or moving it to another directory. Your WordPress install will automatically default to the WordPress Twenty Fifteen theme or whatever official WordPress default theme is current. This is the reason why you should always keep those theme in your folders.

Refresh WordPress

Download a new copy of wordpress to your local machine then access your site via FTP and refresh WordPress Files – copy over the wp-admin and wp-includes folders. Leave wp-content alone, this is where you have customized plugins, themes and such that you don’t want to lose.

Check The WP Config File

You may have accidentally added extra white space at the top of the wp-config.php file. I had the white screen of death problem with one of my WordPress sites recently and the culprit? One little blank space in my wpconfig folder caused me 4 hours of pain!

Other Technicalities You Can Look Into

Check with your web host to see if everything is Ok on that end. Also check site logs if you can. You can also go to the WordPress Codex and support forums to investigate further. Here are some helpful links from them on handling WordPress login troubles.

After you have done all this you may want to review your security settings for your site. Make sure you have your default security measures in place and that all files/folders have the proper permissions set. A great way to check file permissions is to use a plugin I use called Acunetix WP Security.

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