Correct WordPress White Screen of Death Issue

• Activating / updating / modifying / installing a plugin
• Modifying your theme files like “functions.php”

These are the two major reasons for WordPress white screen of death.

Plugins

If you were doing something with a particular plugin before the white screen appears then follow the below instructions to deactivate the plugin.

• Open a FTP client like FileZilla or use File Manager options in hosting cPanel account. Read more about using FileZilla to modify files in WordPress.
• Navigate to site’s root directory and locate “wp-content” folder.
• Open “plugins” folder and locate the folder of the plugin you were updating / modifying.
• Change the folder name to something you can identify later (for example if “wordpress-seo” plugin caused an issued rename it to “wordpress-seo_inactive”).

• Open a new browser window and try to login to WordPress admin dashboard. If you are able to login then the problem was caused by that particular plugin which will be deactivated with an error “Plugin file does not exist”.

• Now change the name of the plugin through FTP or File Manager to its original name.
• Activate and update the plugin again from the dashboard or remove it completely if it is causing the same issue again.

If you are not sure what was the plugin you were working on before the white screen of death appeared then follow the below instructions:

• Login to a FTP client or File Manager and navigate to “wp-content” folder.
• Now locate the “plugins” folder and rename it something like “plugins_inactive”. This will deactivate all the plugins in your site.
• Return back to browser and login to your WordPress admin panel, if it works then navigate to “Plugins” menu.
• Activate the plugins one by one and check which one is causing issue and troubleshoot that plugin.

Theme Files

If you were modifying the theme files like “functions.php” before the white screen appears then follow the same instructions like above to modify the theme files.

• Login to a FTP client or File Manager and navigate to your site’s root directory.
• Locate “themes” folder located inside “wp-content” folder and find out your current active theme.
• Locate the php file you were modifying and change the code back to original.
• If you don’t know what code you had changed then replace the php file with original file from your backup or from the original theme.
• If you don’t want to replace the file (which will revert all your changes back to original theme) then change the theme folder name to something like (mytheme_inactive). This will deactivate the current theme and switch to default WordPress theme.

• Now you should be able to login back to WordPress admin panel and troubleshoot the required theme files again.

Memory Limit

If you did not do anything with plugins or themes before the white screen appears then try increasing the PHP memory limit of your WordPress by adding the following line to “wp-config.php” file located in root directory of your site. Read our article on editing “wp-config.php” file in WordPress.

/** Increase WordPress Memory Limit */
define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '64M');

Your hosting company may have restrictions on PHP memory limit hence check with them before you change to 128M or anything more than that. They will be able to help modifying the memory limit in “php.ini” file for your WordPress installation.

Caching

After correcting the plugin or theme you may still see your site shows white screen due to caching. Ensure to cleanup the cache when checking again.

• Delete your browser’s cache.
• Login to admin dashboard.
• Delete cached files from caching plugin.
• Open your site again.

Debugging

If nothing works and still white screen is shown then you can enable debug mode to view the reason for the site not loading.

• Login to FTP client or File Manager from your cPanel.
• Locate “wp-config.php” file in site’s root directory.
• Change the “WP_DEBUG” value to true as shown below:

/** Enable Debugging Mode */
define(‘WP_DEBUG’, true);

• Save the file.

• Open your website in a browser window.
• Now you will see the parse error / syntax error explaining which line of the php file is causing the blank page.

Once you correct the error the site will be back online again.