The white screen of death can be a website owner’s worst nightmare. This frustrating WordPress error leaves you staring at a blank page, offering no clues about what went wrong.
To make matters worse, this common WordPress error can sometimes affect specific parts of your website, such as the admin area or individual posts.
For example, we have seen the white screen of death inside the WordPress admin area while everything else was working fine. In other cases, we only saw it when viewing a specific post.
Understanding the root causes of this error is the first step to finding a solution. This guide will cover a few solutions for fixing the white screen of death and provide actionable steps to restore your website’s functionality.
Note: Before you make any changes to your site, make sure you have a backup of your WordPress site. If you don’t have access to the admin area, then see our guide on how to manually create a WordPress database backup.
Why Do You See the White Screen of Death in WordPress?
The majority of the time, when you see a white screen of death when trying to visit your WordPress website, it means that a script on your website exhausted the memory limit.
The unresponsive script either gets killed by your WordPress hosting server or simply times out. This is why no actual error message is generated, and you just see a blank white screen.
However, sometimes, you may see an error message.
For example, you might see a critical error message instead of a blank page.
Whether you are seeing a blank screen or the message ‘There has been a critical error on your website’, it’s the same error.
This error can also happen due to a poorly coded theme or plugin installed on your site. Sometimes, it can happen if there is an issue with your web hosting server.
Since the white screen error can be caused by any number of things, it requires methodical troubleshooting to fix it. Here are the steps you should try:
- Check Whether the Problem Happens on Your Other Sites
- Fix the White Screen Error With WordPress Recovery Mode
- Increase the Memory Limit
- Fix the White Screen Error by Disabling All Plugins
- Activate the Default Theme
- Enable Debug Mode to Catch Errors in WordPress
- Clear the WordPress Cache
- Fix the White Screen Error for Longer Articles
Video Tutorial
If you’d prefer written instructions, then just keep reading.
1. Check Whether the Problem Happens on Your Other Sites
If you have other WordPress sites installed on the same hosting account, then you want to start by checking if the problem is happening on other sites as well.
If it is, then that’s a strong indicator that something is wrong with your WordPress hosting service. This could be a temporary issue affecting their service, and you need to reach out to their support for more help.
On the other hand, if the issue is only happening with one website or a specific part of that site, then you know that the problem is with that particular website.
2. Fix the White Screen Error With WordPress Recovery Mode
If the white screen of death error is caused by a WordPress plugin or theme, then WordPress may be able to catch it.
The new fatal error protection feature introduced in WordPress 5.2 can sometimes catch the error, so you may not even see a white screen. Instead, you will see a message that the site is having technical difficulties.
WordPress will also send an email about the problem to your admin email address.
The email will have the subject ‘Your Site is Experiencing a Technical Issue’.
This email message will point out the plugin or theme causing the error, and it will also contain a special link.
This link will allow you to log in to the WordPress recovery mode and deactivate the faulty plugin.
However, if you are seeing the plain white screen of death with no email or recovery mode option, then you need to manually fix the error.
3. Increase the Memory Limit
Usually, this error happens because a script has exhausted your web server’s memory and quit in the middle.
To fix this, you need to increase the PHP memory available to WordPress. This will allow the script to use more memory to finish the job it was supposed to do.
You will need to edit the wp-config.php file on your WordPress site or use a code snippet plugin like WPCode.
You can follow the instructions in our tutorial on how to increase PHP memory in WordPress.
4. Fix the White Screen Error by Disabling All Plugins
If increasing the PHP memory limit did not help, or if you have a high memory limit, like 256M or 512M, then you need to start troubleshooting.
In our experience of troubleshooting this issue, we have always found that the issue is either with a specific plugin or a theme. Let’s go ahead and disable all the plugins.
If you can still access the WordPress admin dashboard, then you can simply go to the Plugins » Installed Plugins page. Select all the installed plugins and then select ‘Deactivate’ under the ‘Bulk actions’ dropdown.
However, if you don’t have access to the WordPress admin area, then you will need to deactivate all plugins via FTP.
First, connect to your WordPress site using an FTP client or your hosting provider’s file manager. Once connected, go to the wp-content folder, where you will see the plugins folder.
Now, you need to right-click on the plugins folder and then select ‘Rename’. You can rename the plugins folder to ‘plugins-deactivated’.
WordPress looks for a folder named plugins to load all plugins. When it cannot find the folder, it simply deactivates all plugins.
If this fixes the issue, then enable one plugin at a time to get to the bottom of the issue. Once you find the plugin causing the issue, you can replace it with an alternative or report the issue to plugin authors.
5. Activate the Default Theme
If the plugin troubleshooting doesn’t fix the issue, then you should try replacing your active theme with a default theme.
First, connect to your website using an FTP client and go to the /wp-content/themes/ folder. It contains all installed themes on your website.
Right-click to select your current WordPress theme and download it to your computer as a backup.
Next, you need to delete your current theme from your website.
Simply right-click on your theme folder and select ‘Delete’. Your FTP client will now delete the theme from your website.
Now, if you have a default WordPress theme like (Twenty Twenty-Two or Twenty Twenty-Three) installed on your website, then WordPress will automatically start using it as the default theme.
However, if you don’t have a default theme installed, then you need to manually install it using FTP.
If this fixes the issue, then you should look at your theme’s functions.php file. If there are extra spaces at the bottom of the file, then you need to remove those, and sometimes that fixes the issue.
If you are using a poorly coded function in your theme’s functions.php file, then it can cause the white screen of death error as well.
Consider downloading a fresh copy of your theme from its source and then installing it manually using FTP.
6. Enable Debug Mode to Catch Errors in WordPress
If nothing has helped so far, then the next step is to turn on debugging in WordPress. This will keep error logs that allow you to see what type of errors are being outputted.
Simply add the following code to your wp-config.php file:
define( 'WP_DEBUG', true);
define( 'WP_DEBUG_LOG', true );
Once you add this, the blank screen will now have errors, warnings, and notices. These may be able to help you determine the root cause.
If you don’t see any errors, then you may still want to check the debug log.
Simply visit the wp-content folder on your website using an FTP client. There, you will find a new debug.log file containing a log of all errors, notices, and warnings.
7. Clear the WordPress Cache
Sometimes, you may have access to the backend, but the front end of the site has the white screen of death.
This can happen because of a caching plugin. In that case, you simply need to empty your WordPress cache.
You can see our guide on how to clear the cache in WordPress for detailed instructions.
8. Fix the White Screen Error for Longer Articles
If you have a white screen of death only on a very long post or page, then this method might work.
This trick basically increases PHP’s text processing capability by increasing the recursion and backtrack limit. You can paste the following code into your wp-config.php file:
/** Trick for long posts */
ini_set('pcre.recursion_limit',20000000);
ini_set('pcre.backtrack_limit',10000000);
We understand that this is a very frustrating error, and we hope that one of the tricks above has fixed the issue for you.
You may also want to see our WordPress troubleshooting guide, which teaches the steps you should take to catch and fix WordPress problems by yourself, or our list of the most common WordPress block editor problems and how to fix them.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Syed Balkhi
Hey WPBeginner readers,
Did you know you can win exciting prizes by commenting on WPBeginner?
Every month, our top blog commenters will win HUGE rewards, including premium WordPress plugin licenses and cash prizes.
You can get more details about the contest from here.
Start sharing your thoughts below to stand a chance to win!
Dagoberto
I need to downgrade 3.9.2 to 3.9.1.
Sylvester Lapisang
Thanks for the post, deactivated all the plugins and it worked, Zopim Chat was the problem
Robbie Davidson
Deleting WP Super Cache Plugin solved the problem for me.
wohfab
It was a crashed functions.php for me (desptie I did not change anything o.o) – THANK YOU SO MUCH!
Aleksandar
Great tips. In my case (WP v.3.5.1) problem was plugin wp-super-cache. I just delete it and all works ok. I didn’t have time to update and upgrade instalation and plugins.. So maybe this helps.
Chris
Thanks, both removing plugins and changing themes to default worked for me. but my prob is i can’t activate my plugins. it’ll just open another white screen of death. all plugins.
Hans Haupt
Thank you so much for your post.
I tried updating my theme and was met with the ‘White Screen of Death’.
I took your advice to delete the problematic theme from the site cPanel and ‘presto’, I was able to log back into wordpress and change the theme to one that works.
Bryan Myers
Here’s something else to look for- make sure you close out the php tag on the page information block (not sure of it’s real name) at the top of your template page. doh.
Kaveh
Thank you so much
Your instruction helped me fix my problem
tnx again
bashar
Thank you so much.. Problem is solve.
Really loving wpbeginner.com
Tommy
Hey all I had this problem too and found a solution. It seemed to happen from updating from 3.71 to 3.72.
Ok so I tried the following:
rename plugin folder
delete theme
change memory in config file
report errors in config file
I then saw the error:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected $end in /home/public_html/wp-includes/cron.php on line 247
I checked the cron.php and it looked like loads of the code was cut off because it endee with a comment. So I uploaded a new cron.php file from wordpress and it worked.
I hope this may help others who have this issue.
Thanks
vincent
Hi, as simpler way is to manually disable all plugins via PhpMyAdmin http://perishablepress.com/quickly-disable-or-enable-all-wordpress-plugins-via-the-database/
Mike
It’s the first time I write here. In my case, everything is blank, I can’t even log in with
It is still under construction, so I just uploaded a new theme and all went blank.
I know I have to revert the theme to the “twenty twelve”, but how? If I can’t even log in.
any help?! THANK YOU
WPBeginner Support
Connect to your website using an FTP client, go to /wp-content/themes/ directory and delete the theme you just uploaded. If your webhost offers cPanel, then you can use file manager in cPanel to delete the theme.
Admin
Jay Lawrence
Here’s another way to get WSOD! My template, from Yoo Themes, generates a ‘cache’ directory. I accidentally filled the drive with this website causing a zero byte cache file.
root@www:/var/www/wp-content/themes/yoo_vanilla_wp# ls -l cache/
total 32
-rw-r–r– 1 www-data root 25 Mar 13 16:41 index.php
-rw-r–r– 1 www-data www-data 0 Mar 13 16:43 xml-9ae22c153220f9eda980e5ec3b598954.php
Delete the “xml*.php” files in here after you’ve cleaned up your drive … back in business.
That only took a couple hours of hunting – groan.
Ope
Sorry i deleted the xml.php file but it still came back the moment i refreshed the wp-admin page. yet WSOD persist. Any help. am using a yoo theme too
Michelle
I have this White Screen on my website, have tried EVERYTHING and nothing working. I cannot access my wordpress login or admin page. It is a new website, so I dont mind wiping it clean and starting again, but I have tried to upload a fresh install of wordpress 3 times and it keeps crashing dreamweaver. Is there any other way I can fix this?? Need help Please
Aamna
I am a subscriber of your site and my client is also seeing the white screen of death
I have used all the fixes but still no success
What I fell is that I think my clients site’s wp-content has unnecessary folders like
1- backups (files in this folder are ( .htaccess, .backup_running, database_arcproject_co_u.sql)
2-cache
3-uploads(it has many folders of images)
Please tell me what should I do?
Thanx
WPBeginner Support
First make sure that your client has a backup. If they don’t have a backup then you need to create one now before you make any further changes.
After that you can start deleting the unnecessary files from wp-contents folder. Try deactivating all plugins by renaming the wp-content/plugins folder to wp-content/plugins.old.
Admin
Aamna
I have tried disabling the plugins but it didn’t worked.
Anyways how can i take a backup of the site?
WPBeginner Support
In case you don’t have access to the admin area, you would first need to make a database backup manually. After that you would need to download all the files from the website, using an FTP client.
AJ
One of the most common causes of whitescreen is white space at the beginning or end of a functions.php file or other php file. Often when cutting and pasting or simply editing code a line break gets in at the top or bottom and bam!!…
Look before the tag at the bottom.
jd
i did some testing and have uploaded a new theme to the server and have added no limit on the memory and reinstalled the wp to current one. and what i found out to be an issue is with the SQL data base.. when wp tells the SQL server that i have deleted or updated info it seems to keep everything even the deleted items.. NOw the big question what did i do to fix it. well i went to the data base and erased the whole thing and then renamed it back to the same one and went to my site and enter some basic info that showed up .. and BAMMM no white screen i went and turned on the theme and continued my adjustment and creation
Lea
Hi,
I took over a WP website for a client and I logged in once, updated the pluggins and since then, I can’t enter the Admin section of WP nor see the website. White screen of death indeed, for both.
I have read in the comments part above that someone had the same issue, which you directed to the article “Locked out of WordPress admin area.” Unfortunately, in that article, you direct the person with a White screen of Death to the “How To fix the WorldPress White screen of death” article, which is this topic here.
So… I am a beginner to WP and I am lost. + my client hasn’t had a website for the past 24 hours.
I would really appreciate some help or re-direction to a tutorial/article that tell me how to actually access my admin page !
Thanks a lot in advance.
Lea
Dum
Renaming wp super cache plugin directory in “Plugins” folder resoved the issue
abdul aziz
Brother !!!!!!!!!! Really Thank you, it was theme problem , can you suggest me how to fix this problem with same theme???
Abdul Azzi
i have followed all steps……… but still having same error..
please suggest me what i should have to do ???
Boby
Hey, my WordPress page only can visit by me (admin), when i logout, the homepage is white screen. please help
WPBeginner Support
Try switching to a default theme like twenty thirteen or twenty fourteen. If this does not solve your problem, then disable all installed plugins. Also update your permalinks.
Admin
Darlo
Tried to update my blog today and had problems (was using Wordpress app for android). Had considered it to be an app problem and reinstalled it before considering to actually check the site (something I should really have done in hindsight). As I have more than one blog hosted on the same site (the other being fine) I started to get panicky. After diving into a net-cafe I managed to find this trouble shooting guide and now I’m back online.
Thank you.
Lark
I’m working with the Roots theme. Turned on the computer and had a white page. Had no memory of what I had done a few weeks before. Replacing the custom theme with the default theme and then undoing changes to scripts.php and widgets.php worked for me. Wow, simple solution, but sometimes it’s quite hard to see simple troubleshooting through the panic… Thanks so much!
Claudia
Great help. 1000 Thanks
My issue resolved.
Ian
Thank you. I thought I’d lost everything.
Cesar Pietri
Thanks,
It was a great help
In my case solve rename the plugins folder.
Lois Wakeman
Another cause that I just found (WSOD in site and backend) after upgrade.
Manual upgrade via FTP was interrupted by a lost connection and somehow a file got missed.
I used your helpful instructions to turn on debugging having ruled out themes and plugins as problems, which allowed me to trace the offending file and upload it. Voila!
soeb
Thanx it was a great help..!
In my case it was functions.php file.
Rhodon
I had to activate the debug mode, and this is my error:
Warning: require_once(ABSPATHwp-admin/includes/dashboard.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /var/www/domains/rhodon.nl/www/wp-admin/index.php on line 13 Fatal error: require_once(): Failed opening required ‘ABSPATHwp-admin/includes/dashboard.php’ (include_path=’.:/usr/share/php:/usr/share/pear’) in /var/www/domains/rhodon.nl/www/wp-admin/index.php on line 13
How can I solve this?
Rhodon
Junior
I had to use the edit phpMyAdmin fix to finally get it to work. Editing the database is never fun but your clear instructions made it easy. THANKS!!!
Thomas
It was the blank lines in functions.php
Thanks so much!
Finally read it in the comments.
JohnLionFlow
Same here! Removed the blank lines in my theme’s functions.php file and it worked.
earthora
I had the white screen on everything, front and backend, was starting to panic. I removed the last blank line in functions.php and I’m all back up and running. How would it get there? I’ve never opened it on this installation?
Christal
I was able to get out of the “white screen of death” by changing my file name from plugins to plugins-temp, but then my site had reverted back to the old theme, and when I reverted to my new theme (which was installed about a month ago), all of my plugins and widgets were gone! It’s a very basic theme with all of the customizations gone! How do I recover all of this??
Niné
THANKS A MILLION!!!!
Eric Gitonga
I had to go into phpMyAdmin and into my MySQL database to drop all the wp-* tables created from a previous Wordpress install before I could solve the White Screen of Death problem. It now works just fine.
Ilke
Hi,
I was very happy with your advice once about a year ago with a white screen on the entire front-page of a wp-website. Unfortunately, this time (and for another site) it doesn’t work so far.
I extended the memory several times (I’m at 512M now) and changed the auto keys, that didn’t help. Now I renamed the plugins-folder to plugins.deactivated, and I get this error message:
Fatal error: Cannot redeclare _1059195956() (previously declared in /public/sites/www.name.nl/wp-includes/version.php:9) in /public/sites/www.name.nl/wp-includes/version.php on line 9.
Any idea what else I can try?
Thanks for sharing all this useful information,
Ilke
WPBeginner Support
Try renaming your theme’s folder as well. After that you need to download WordPress and upload a fresh copy of themes folder to your site. WordPress will now fall back to default twenty thirteen theme. Let us know if it worked for you.
Admin
Ilke
I did rename the current themes folder and uploaded a fresh themes folder from a new wp 3.7 download. Unfortunately, that gives me a white screen altogether on the front as well as the back office and I still receive the same error-message.
With debug set to true in wp-config I got
Notice: WP_User->id was called with an argument that is deprecated since version 2.1
and a few other deprecated notices as well as a notice that wp_enqueue_script and wp_enqueue_style was called incorrectly, which both refer to the functions.php
This is really starting to worry me. Do you happen to have some other advice still?
Best,
Ilke
Ilke
I also tried renaming the plugins-folder and uploading a fresh one. And I cleared the cache. Still I get the same error-message. Since (with debug set to true on wp-config) I get Notice: undifined index-messages concerning two plugins, should I delete those?
Puja singh
Hi, I am facing the same blank page problem for my site . I tried most of the mention step
Disable all plugin
Activate the default theme.
increase the memory limit to 128 MB.
but no luck, any help will we appreciated.
suneel
Life saving tutorial…
Thank u very much
Justin
Thank you. I seem to get it when I’ve been making lots of updates to my site, then I get locked out and have to wait. A memory issue would make sense. Time to clean out a bunch of unused plugins.
Michael Lambertz
Another reason can be false permissions… I tried to copy a wordpress directore via unix command cp -R, and after that all copied files weren’t in the group www-data. chgrp www-data wordpress_dir/ -R did it for me
Jacob Worsøe
I have periodically white screens on both frontend and backend. The white screens occur in a completely random pattern. Are the recommendations the same in my situation or do they only apply to more permanent issues?
Editorial Staff
Yes. It seems like you’re site is running out of memory because of a process that’s being ran. So the process is the same.
Admin
Hossein
thank you soooooooooo much, my problem solved, it was because of blank lines in my functions.php
LC
I can’t even enter the Admin section of WP. I get the blank page. What should I do?
Editorial Staff
Read the article.
Admin
maria
it does not say how to get into your admin if you are blanked. out
WPBeginner Support
We have a guide on what to do when you are locked out of WordPress admin area.
Rosie
Thanks, this was useful. I had the white screen on the live site, but WP admin was fine. I use WP Super Cache and I cleared the cache with no effect, then deactivated all plugins, and when I’d tried everything else I suddenly thought of the expired cached pages.
If you use WP Super Cache you have to delete the expired cache too. That worked right away. Then I set my garbage collection (on the Advanced tab) to hourly instead of daily, to try to prevent it happening again.
Tom B.
Hello .. thought I might add 2cents,
I’m using WP Super Cache too and often crashed to White Screen. Looked at the wp-config.php file and found they were putting their instructions above the SQL allocation in the script, so I moved them down and added the ‘default Memory Limit’ tweak and now my site http://webinardatabase.com/ smokes!
REF:
First save a unmodified copy of wp-config.php to your HD.
Open your wp-config.php, which is located in the root WordPress directory.
Locate the WP Super Cache code (their code is obvious –three lines- the fourth is a duplicate, but I left it), and move them down (I put mine above the SALTS).
Then add the following line: define(‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ’64M’);
Just BEFORE the super cache, seemed logical.
And save, check performance.
IDK, I think this is a bug. Made no sense to be allocating cache before opening the SQL database.
Worked for me. Prost! — Thanks Wpbeginner.com
PS: Just noticed the post below, WP Super Cache requires permalinks be set to post name, this error appeared on a fresh install. 2 more cents.
Tom B.
Follow-up.
Had to kick WP Super Cache to the curb.. too buggy.. Gone with W3 Total Cache.
Lone Watie: We thought about it for a long time, “Endeavor to persevere.” And when we had thought about it long enough, we declared war on the Union.
Union = WP, really is this the answer?!
Tom B.
Ps: Once the plugin is deleted, return to wp-config and manually remove WPSC lines.
Really, no, really!?!
Glenn "TheeMahn" Cady
Tom, I would like to personally extend a much deserved thanks.
My wpconfig had define(‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ’64M’); after supercache, moving it above has closed my “White screen of death issue.” I had been refreshing for months. The site now seems fairly snappy.
Thanks again Tom,
TheeMahn
Jacobus
Personally I haven’t had this problem, yet, I have the problem that I have to reset my permalinks all the time because of endless redirects. Drives me crazy. Every time I publish a new post on my blog I have to set the permalinks back to standard and then back to post name. Do you know if this is host related or plugin related?
Editorial Staff
IT definitely sounds like a plugin issue.
Admin
Manish Anand
Yep, turning on Debug option helped. It was incomplete uploading of query.php file.
Thanks
Joel Andrew Glovier
Here’s another suggestion when none of the above works, try flushing your rewrite rules cache.
I had a single page on my site returning as a blank page, and tried almost every solution above, as well as some other things (like installing Debug Bar plugin, etc) to no avail.
I was able to narrow it down to what I assumed to be a premalink issue, however, since the page had been working before, and stopped working; and also because even when I used a different page template it still was not working properly (I had prior to that assumed to had to do with my custom wp_query in that page template).
So I started investigating the Wordpress rewrite system, and came to find out Wordpress keeps a cache of all the custom page slugs and rewrite rules. (more about that here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Rewrite_API/flush_rules and here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/WP_Rewrite)
I also found that this method is used to flush the rewrite cache:
$wp_rewrite->flush_rules();So I tried just adding it to the second line in my functions.php file, and after one page refresh the page contents showed up again.
IMPORTANT: make sure to remove the method after using it once, as there are some costly performance hits associated with leaving that code in your file. You should only need to use it once to resolve the issue, however.
Editorial Staff
Saving the permalinks settings again will also flush the rewrite rules from our understanding. Thanks for the suggestion about this
Admin
Joel Andrew Glovier
Yeah, but that didn’t work in my case. In fact, normally you don’t even have to save the Permalink settings page, just visit it. But in my case that neither visiting, nor saving, nor chaning to another setting and changing back worked.
But actually I discovered it was something much more obscure, and the flushing was only a temporary band-aid.
Turns out I had a conflict between a page with the title/slug of “team” and a custom post-type with the rewrite slug of “team”. The custom post type ended up winning out, except when I put the rules flush in place, in which case it stopped it from winning out.
But the real reason I was getting the white screen was because when the custom-post type slug was winning out, it was defaulting to rendering the page with the archive.php file, which I had created (as my theme is from scratch), but not put any markup in yet. The file was completely blank, hence my white screen.
Womp womp womp wanhhhhh.
Editorial Staff
Yup that would do it. We learnt that the hard way by looking at one of our user’s themes.
Christian
!!IF YOU TRIED EVERYTHING THIS WILL WORKS!!!
Nothing else could even make a change in the BLANK PAGE.
I put that code an recivied a error, after that I removed it and the website was online again!
I was about to broke my laptop hahahha
Jonath Lee
Whenever you’re testing themes or plugins, always leave a tab for “Themes”. In case of WSOD, you may still able to activate the default twenty eleven themes.
Editorial Staff
That doesn’t work if your admin is also locked. The next screen will just return a white screen of death too.
Admin
Jonath Lee
It could? May be I haven’t reach the Admin Lock level so, I guess we should leave the tab for the phpmyadmin page instead +_+
Johnny
Damn! Just seen the section in the article about the functions.php file – oops! Oh well it will teach me not to read so quickly!
Johnny
Another ‘gotcha’ is whitespace below the closing ?> in your functions.php file. I got this once a while back and deleting the whitespace below it solved the problem. This can also cause a white screen after hitting the publish button as well.