There must have been a situation where you tried to go to your website, but instantly met with a completely blank tab. You refresh, and it’s still there.
The WordPress user community came up with a sinister name for this event: when your website disappears and leaves only a pure white page in its wake. It’s ominously called “the white screen of death“.
Now, as panic-inducing as it sounds, there’s no cause for worry. Your website is still there; you just have to see what’s preventing the browser from displaying it. Oftentimes, the source of the error is either in the PHP code or the database.
As always, there are no unsolvable problems when it comes to WordPress. And we’re here to help you diagnose and fix your error, step by step.
For quicker navigation, you can use the table of contents below.
Can WordPress do something about this?
The answer is yes… and no.
Since the 5.2 update, WordPress has included a feature where theme and plugin errors that cause crashes are automatically addressed.
Instead of a white screen, you get this:
Along with the error screen comes an email that tells you where the problem occurred and how to solve it:
But if you are here, that means there was no email and no error message. This simply means that WordPress wasn’t able to figure out the error on its own.
It’s up to us, and you find a way out of this conundrum.
What will you need?
While the easiest way to troubleshoot and solve the WSoD is through the WordPress admin, this error is infamous for limiting access to the admin dashboard.
Luckily, there are workarounds – two, to be precise:
- Being able to access the WordPress admin area, or if that is impossible,
- Access to your FTP (or SFTP) client
As you’re about to see, these two will be crucial in trying out the fixes we’ll go through.
1. Retrace your steps
The first thing you want to do is to remember all the changes you made to the website recently. Ask yourself:
- What was the last thing you installed?
- Did you change anything in the code?
- When was the last time your plugins or themes were updated?
If it’s easier for you, write down what changes you recently made. This gives you a good head start in troubleshooting the error.
Updating or installing new features, even if they’re as small as a theme, can cause a white screen of death due to incompatibility issues with your website version.
2. Keep a note of everything
We’d just like to briefly mention how crucial it is to keep note of every step you take to fix the WSoD. As you go along, you’ll want to track every step and every fix, so that you can use it for future reference.
Or ultimately, if you don’t fix the problem, you’ll at least have a very useful document to give to your hosting provider.
It will be of great use for them to pinpoint where the problem originated and ultimately resolve it.
3. Narrow down the search
If you own several WordPress sites on the same web host, visit those pages to see if they have the same issue. Seeing more WSoD means that the trouble is with the hosting service.
However, if the error occurs only on specific websites or pages, then the problem is on your end.
4. Enable WordPress debug
When a bigger error like this occurs, the script simply stops whatever it was executing (in this case, loading the website). If it stops before any of your content is displayed, then a completely blank screen will appear.
By manually switching on WordPress’s debugging feature, you won’t fix the issue, but you will allow your script to display some information on the error. To enable debugging, do the following:
- Locate your WordPress installation folder
- Find the wp-config.php, right-click on it, and choose Edit
- Scroll down until you find the line: define( ‘WP_DEBUG’, false )
- Change “false” to “true”
- Reload your website, and see if the blank screen now has an error line
Note: If you don’t have the wp_debug line in the code, you can add it yourself at the top.
How exactly does the debug help?
Let’s say that you’ve successfully enabled the debug, and now it’s displaying an error message on a white screen. Now what?
Looking closely at the error text, you can see how the debug “explains” exactly where the problem is, the pathway to it, and even the line in which it occurs. For example:
The debug can easily locate a problem, so long as the cause of your WSoD is in the PHP itself. If you’ve found the error, then just refer to one of our fixes below.
If not, there is another way to track down the culprit behind your crash.
5. Enable PHP error log
A lot of website owners track their PHP errors regularly to prevent any sudden crashes, such as the WSoD.
These errors can be logged in a private file, so when you run into a problem, you can easily find out what caused it.
So to say that having your PHP error log enabled is useful is an understatement. It can save you hours of troubleshooting and scouring the internet for fixes.
Here’s how you can enable the log through .htaccess:
- Locate the .htaccess file in your website’s root folder
- Right-click and select Edit
- Input the following lines:
# enable PHP error logging
php_flag log_errors on
php_value error_log /home/path/public_html/domain/PHP_errors.log
- Create the PHP_errors.log file and place it in a folder of your choosing
- Copy and paste that folder path in the last line of the code above
- Voila! Now you have an error log you can access any time.
The second step will be to disable the error log from showing up publicly (since that is the default). If they show up on your page, they break the site layout, serve as a potential security risk, and confuse your visitors.
- In your .htaccessfile add the following:
# supress php errors
php_flag display_startup_errors off
php_flag display_errors off
php_flag html_errors off
As simple as that.
And with an error log put in place, we can move on to the next hands-on task.
6. Disabling your plugins
Plugins are the first most common offender, followed by themes at a close second. Whether it’s because the developers don’t update them or their features clash with the WordPress version, plugins can cause a lot of issues.
To see if a simple plugin monkey-wrenched your system, you can check in one of two ways:
1. If you can access the admin dashboard
If the WSoD isn’t stopping you from accessing the WordPress admin dashboard, checking your plugins should be a breeze.
Follow the next few steps:
- Enter the dashboard
- Find Plugins on the left side and select it
- Go to Installed Plugins
- Check the Plugin box at the top to select all of the plugins
- Look for the Bulk Actions at the top and choose Deactivate
It should look something like this:
Once you’ve disabled all the plugins, refresh your website page.
If the white screen of death disappears, that means one of the plugins is causing the issue. To check which one, simply reactivate them one by one and refresh the page every time.
When you find the troublesome plugin, see if it was either a recent update that caused the WSoD. From here on, you can either delete or keep the plugin inactive.
Alternatively, if it’s a plugin you need and love, contact the plugin developer to see if they can resolve the issue for you.
2. If you can’t access the admin dashboard
In case the WSoD is limiting access to the admin dashboard, you can check the plugins via FTP. How does it work?
- Connect to your website via an FTP tool
- Find the wp-content folder
- Inside it should be a plugins folder
- Rename it to plugins_old
- Create a new folder under it and name it plugins
- Refresh your website
It should look like this:
What happens here?
When you refresh your website, WordPress goes to the plugins folder to pull them up. If it can’t locate the folder (since you’ve renamed it), it will disable all the plugins automatically.
Is your website back up after that refresh? If yes, then one of those plugins is the problem.
To test which one:
- Copy each plugin folder from plugins_old to plugins.
- After each copy and paste, refresh the website page again
This is the manual way of reactivating the plugins (if you still don’t have access to the admin dashboard).
- The last plugin you copied that causes the white screen of death is your culprit.
The plugins themselves don’t seem to be the cause? Try the next, lesser-known plugin fix.
3. Clear the browser and plugin cache
Some users have a caching plugin. It stores frequently accessed data in a cache to speed up your website’s loading time.
While it speeds up the site’s performance, it can be the cause of the white screen of death.
Firstly, clear out your browser cache and reload the page. For Google Chrome, it’s:
- Clicking on the Menu icon, which is the three dots on the top right
- Move down to More Tools from the drop-down menu
- Select Clear Browsing Data
- In the pop-up, check Cached Images and Files
This should help you with the browser cache.
As for the plugin cache, it all depends on which plugin you have. The developers usually make it easily accessible through the plugin’s settings page.
7. Disabling your theme
As we’ve mentioned earlier, themes are the second most common culprit for the white screen of death.
Luckily for us, the theme-checking process is pretty much the same as the one for the plugins. We’ll go through the same two points.
1. If you can access the admin dashboard
Naturally, having access to the dashboard will make this task much easier.
Go to Appearance, then Themes, and activate WordPress’s default “Twenty Seventeen” theme.
Refresh your site. If it pops back up, then the issue is with your initial theme.
Either look for a new theme or contact the developer to see if they can update the theme version.
2. If you can’t access the admin dashboard
The process is fairly similar to that of testing your plugins:
- Connect to your website via an FTP tool
- Find the wp-content folder
- Inside it should be a themes folder
- Rename it to themes_old (which makes WordPress revert to the default theme)
- Refresh your website
If the website is up, then your theme is either not updated or incompatible with your version of the website.
To resolve this, you can contact the developer of the theme and let them know about the issue. Odds are they can help reinstate the theme without a hitch.
8. Increase PHP execution time
Sometimes, the white screen of death occurs when the script is taking too long to execute a certain process. In that case, the process terminates, and all that is displayed is the blank page.
This happens, for example, if your page is heavy with large files like images, video, and audio files.
One way to go about this is to contact your web host provider and ask about their maximum execution time. The usual execution time is thirty seconds, but your host provider could extend it to sixty seconds.
Another way is to increase the execution time manually by editing your .htaccess on your own:
- Locate the .htaccess file in your website’s root folder
- Backup .htaccess before you begin
- Edit the file
- Add the line: php_value max_execution_time 60
9. Fix any syntax errors
As we mentioned earlier, WordPress’s debug could point out where exactly your error originated.
For example, it can let you know that you have a syntax error. This happens when you make a typo in the code itself if you’ve been doing some scripting.
Usually, the problem comes down to a few things:
- You’re missing a “;” at the end of one (or several) lines
- You’re missing brackets in certain places
- An additional space at the beginning or the end of your functions.php file (which usually happens when copying and pasting blocks of code)
To fix the issue, simply access your SFTP and roll out the latest backup version.
Note: This is a good place to remind you of frequently backing up your website, especially before you decide to do some scripting on your own.
10. PHP text processing
While troubleshooting for the source of the error, see if the WSoD occurs on a page that has especially lengthy text. Or, if the page itself is long due to a large number of images.
The script could be having issues with loading properly because the content exceeds its processing limit.
Here’s how to increase the processing limit:
- Access your wp-config file
- Add the following lines:
/** Fixing long post*/
ini_set(‘pcre.recursion_limit’,20000000);
ini_set(‘pcre.backtrack_limit’,10000000);
Reload the page to see if the problem has been resolved.
11. Update your PHP version
Another thing worth trying is to check which version of PHP you’re currently running. Some plugins and themes are incompatible with certain versions of PHP, which can result in a WSoD.
To see if this is causing the issue, simply access your cPanel and look under Software. There should be an icon titled Select PHP Version.
You’ll be greeted with another window that allows you to cycle between several versions of PHP through a drop-down menu.
Try upgrading and downgrading by one version to see if this fixes your problem.
If it does, stay on the rolled-back version, update your files, and then revert to the newest PHP.
A good idea for future installations would be to check if your current PHP version supports the plugin.
12. Increase the PHP memory limit
When a visitor opens your website, the script pulls up all the information within a split second. There are times when something inside the script exhausts the memory, forcing the page to crash.
This usually happens with file-heavy pages, as we’ve said in one of the previous points, or your website has grown immensely from all the accumulated content.
The best thing would be to increase the PHP memory limit to ensure the script can undertake larger tasks:
- Start up your FTP client
- Access wp-config.php file
- Edit the code and add the line: define( ‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ’64M’ ); just before the end
- Save changes
- Upload the file back to the server
Keep in mind that the memory limit can be changed to 256MB or 512MB as well.
If this doesn’t help either, it could be that a plugin or a theme is using far too much memory. Check with your web host for performance stats. They should reveal how much memory each part of your site is using.
13. Failed Auto-Update
During its auto-updates, WordPress can run into a hiccup that causes the update to suddenly stop. While sometimes the issue resolves itself automatically, other times it causes the white screen of death.
To check if this was the cause:
- Go to your root folder
- Look for a .maintenance file
- If it’s there, delete it
- Refresh the website
If it comes back up, the update was successful, but the file was not deleted. However, if the update wasn’t finished, it will resume automatically.
But if even after that things don’t return to normal, you might have to update yourself.
1. One-click update
- Access your WordPress Dashboard
- Go over to Updates
- Click Update Now
It should look like this:
2. Manual update
This one can be very tricky, and actually risky to lose a lot of your files if done improperly.
We advise you to ask for help with this next instruction unless you already have some experience with updating files.
- Download the latest WordPress .zip file
- Unzip the file
- Connect to the server via FTP
- Open the folder with your old WordPress files
- Delete the old wp-admin and wp-includes folders
- Upload the new wp-admin and wp-includes
- Carefully copy and paste individual files from the wp-content folder – DO NOT overwrite the entire folder!
- Important: wp-content has all your website information: themes, plugins, contents, and so on. You can’t overwrite any of those files, because you’ll be losing them permanently!
- Right-click and select upload to transfer the rest of the files to your old WordPress directory from the new one.
The goal here is to replace old core WordPress files with new ones. You should avoid overwriting YOUR own files that have been added to the wp-content folder.
14. Lastly… contact your web host
At the beginning of the article, we mentioned that you should check if other websites you own are experiencing the issue.
When hosting providers are doing maintenance or having problems on their end, plenty of users will experience downtime.
If this is the case for you, you can go to your web host’s homepage and check if there are any announcements regarding maintenance or crashes. Alternatively, email your provider and express your concern. They should be able to help you if the problem is on their end.
To summarize
The white screen of death is far from an irreversible mistake. As we’ve seen, the possible causes can range from simple typos to the web host’s downtime. What matters is to keep your calm.
Far too many times, we’ve encountered comments from users who tried everything, only to give up in the end and try to reinstall WordPress, only to lose all their data.
In this article, you’ve seen fixes to the causes we know are most common (and some of them less). Plugins and themes are among them, as are lengthy text posts and PHP memory drain.
Lastly, don’t forget to keep track of everything you do, no matter how frustrating it is. If you eventually decide to hand over the problem to your web host provider, that information will be more than enough to help them resolve your error quickly.
FAQ
Why does the WordPress White Screen of Death happen without an error message?
The WordPress White Screen of Death (WSoD) often appears when a PHP fatal error stops execution before output is rendered. If debugging is disabled and no PHP error log is active, the browser shows a blank page instead of displaying the actual error message.
How can I troubleshoot WSoD if I can’t access the WordPress admin dashboard?
If the admin dashboard is inaccessible, use FTP or SFTP to access the wp-content directory. From there, disable plugins or themes manually, enable WP_DEBUG in wp-config.php, or check for a .maintenance file to isolate the root cause.
Can plugin or theme incompatibility cause a White Screen of Death?
Yes, incompatible or outdated WordPress plugins and themes frequently trigger WSoD due to PHP conflicts. After updates, mismatched versions may cause fatal errors, memory exhaustion, or execution time limits that prevent the site from loading properly.
Does the PHP memory limit affect the WordPress White Screen of Death?
A low PHP memory limit can cause scripts to terminate prematurely, resulting in a blank page. Increasing WP_MEMORY_LIMIT in wp-config.php or adjusting server settings may resolve WSoD if the issue stems from memory exhaustion.
How do failed WordPress auto-updates lead to WSoD?
Interrupted auto-updates can leave incomplete core files or an undeleted .maintenance file in the root directory. This can trigger the White Screen of Death until the update is completed manually or corrupted WordPress core files are replaced.
