Duane Blake

Front end developer

Troubleshooting the fatal WordPress white screen

Getting the white screen of death or any other error messages on your WordPress site can be a nightmare to fix but don’t panic. A lot of the time it can be easier as updating plugin. I’m going to write some of my personal steps. I use to resolve this issue.

WordPress white screen

1. Ensure WordPress and the plugins you are using are to update

I can’t stress this enough it important to ensure that you are running on the latest version of WordPress. Not only do you get all the latest new features which the WordPress community has created. But a lot of the time the updates are often a security patch and bug fixes. Which can leave your site vulnerable, if not updated.

2. Switch to one of the default theme such as 2015 and 2016

If you switch your site to one of the default WordPress themes such as 2014 or 2015. Now go back to your site. Hopefully your site should be working now.

3. Disable all plugins

If your site still showing the white screen of death. Disable all your wordpress plugins. If your site is now working. Then reactivate each plugin one by one until you find the plugin which was giving you problems.

4. Switch on debugging

If you still having difficulties, the only last step I could suggest is switch on error reporting. Add the following snippet below to the wp-config.php file which is located in the root of your site directory.

error_reporting(E_ALL); 
ini_set('display_errors', 1);
define( 'WP_DEBUG', true);

This should give you some error messages on whats causing the error. It’s hard to say what would fix this problem. As it could be any number of things. But I would say Google is your friend to resolve this issue.

If you are unlucky to ever have this white screen of death on a WordPress site. I hope these steps can help you resolve the problem.

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