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
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Omar Sirwan
I solved it…
I tried those:
define(‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ’64M’);
Change Plugins name
Check white spaces
Increase memory
Change Theme
Upload new wp-admin
And everything related to plugins
Finally I downloaded my wp-config using FTP. Opened it with notepad++ and save it again with the encoding utf-8… It was utf-8 BOM.
Linda
My page does not work! it shows SERVER ERROR 500. and i am unable to log into the admin
Andreas
Thank you, changing the SiteURL did the job.
What a weird bug…
Girish
I am telling you i cannot access my wp-admin page how i am suppose to disable plugin and change the theme.
WPBeginner Support
Simply connect to your website using an FTP client and rename the plugins folder to plugins-old. This will deactivate your plugins directory.
Admin
Madeleine Landley
This is one of the most extensive guides I found so far – with easy tutorials on how to solve it. I like it!
I’m actually only missing one thing causing WSOD and that is extra spaces in the code, usually in functions.php, header.php, single.php etc. I’ve found this error causing most of the white screens I’ve resolved. The extra spaces are usually at the end of the file, after a closing ?>, used instead of tabs and on line breaks (empty rows).
Thanks for a great guide.
Michael Silva
After some changes (failures !!) in the code of a plugin did the famous White wp screen with the following message “Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘the’ (T_STRING) in / home / velafati / public_html / wp-content /plugins/woocommerce/includes/class-wc-countries.php on line 436 ”
How to know where the problem had been entered in the file “class-wc-countries.php” through cpanel and replace all the code for the original code (had recorded the original code in Notepad). The problem is that even after upgrading to the problem folder remains, what should I do?
viki sangre
I have the same issue. I have made no changes to my website but when I saw my website in the morning it show white blank screen. I haven’t updated any plugin.
Backend is working well.
Any help please!!
viki sangre
I updated my wordpress with latest version and every things gonna fine. I think automatically updation of wordpress also cause a problem.
Hansel
Hi Guys,
I got some white space page issue in our wordpress page and did below troubleshooting but still no luck. It’s also weird that I don’t get any error.log that’s why it’s kinda hard to know the exact issue. Any help would be very much appreciated. Thanks Guys.
Troubleshooting made:
Disabled all plugins
tried to use the default theme
restarted apache2
Sabina
I fixed it! It was a plug in. Do NOT update the Yuzo plug in if you currently have it!
Sabina
Please help!!! I think I’m gonna die! I get the white screen and I cannot get to my admin page. Everything is white :(:(:( Please, please tell me step by step what I should do not to mess things even more!
Thank you!
Naomi
I experienced the white screen of death tonight and I couldn’t access my login, website, or any of the pages. I fixed it by going to hosting site and pulling up the file manager. I was able to edit the code I had misplaced through the files on the hosting site and then my site came back up!
Lee Binder
In our case it was problems with cron, either WP cron or the server’s cron service. “Fixed”/ worked-around with the WP Delay Cron Plugin
Thomas
Hi all, I have the same error but cant even access the login page for my site! Any ideas on what i could do? Thanks!
calvin
I had the same issue, it was a plugin. went to the cpanel, then file manager, public html folder and on right side, right click on “error log” to view error. Plugin causing error was renamed and whala… I could get to the dashboard.
Hope this helps you and others!
Bomi
This should be the firt option if you only have access to FTP, it will tell you exactly which file is messed up. Thanks.
error_reporting(E_ALL); ini_set(‘display_errors’, 1);
define( ‘WP_DEBUG’, true);
Kay
I get an error message that says Site can nor be accessed. Disconnect site. When I click on admin the screen goes white. Please help!
Andy
I had this problem with my installation (white screen only on WP-admin. I eventually solved it by using the debug tools in the browser (hit F12 in most browsers). Using the console view in the debug I could see that there was some sort of error in a frame that was being used.
I haven’t got to the bottom of this yet but I was able to access the login page and access wp-admin by switching my re-directed URL for the raw IP address. I expect I have mucked up the re-direct in some way but I’m just relieved to have fixed it to be honest!
Hope this helps someone else!
Jacob J
The error reporting thing solved my problem. Knew I had a misplaced code in there somewhere, and those few lines in the config file showed me where. Thanks a lot. /Jacob
dinesh Kumar
thanks a lot i found error wp_debug already defined and resolved this error and also installed new theme now my site is opening but i can’t access my admin page when i type admin url it’s showing it’s not redirecting properly
Kaley Basham
Ok, so I replaced the theme by replacing the current_theme, template and stylesheet in PHPmyAdmin to twentyeleven and it fixed the white screen of death issue. Now I checked my functions.php document and I had no extra spaces in the end.
So now what?!?!??? Thanks for any help!!
WPBeginner Support
Try downloading a fresh copy of your WordPress theme.
Admin
Adria
THANK YOU SO MUCH! It was one of the Whatsapp Plug-ins which was causing an issue. I can now sleep peacefully tonight – my site is up and running again.
Timothy
Thanks for this. I ran the error code and found a malicious file. link-template.suspected.
I removed the file and replaced it with a new one that I had downloaded and that fixed.
All this after going through every other thing to no avail.
Replacing the bad file got things back.
stef
Thanks, debug mode works great i could find the faulty php script
Hugo
The blank screen can also be caused by using the wrong version of php. PHP 5.2 has cause me trouble in the past, changing to 5.4 fixed it. Be sure to check this if all else fails.
Kelly
Another vote for PHP version. I tried almost everything and was about to replace the theme when I gave this a go. Upgraded to 5.5 and like magic, it was fixed! Thanks Hugo.
Bobby
Coded my own theme and had blank screen when trying to update posts and pages, deleting spaces at the bottom of my functions file solved the issue!
Jonas Holm
I went through all the above steps without succes. I downgraded PHP 5.6 to 5.3 on my providers PHP-admin-page. That solved my problem.
Grace
I’ve read through all of this but sadly my problem is that I can’t even log on anymore – I got the white screen of death but it says that when you try to go onto my page and when I even try to go to the Wordpress dashboard (via Godaddy). I now have absolutely no way to log on to my wordpress – not sure what to do!
Tawanda
I just fixed this problem, it was a caching issue. If you go to your wp-config.php file then remove the code just above the define(‘DB_NAME’, ‘your_db_name’);
This should work, as it worked for me
Nhan Nguyen
It worked fine for me. Many thanks.
jake
No code there
Jan Fallon
I had the WP CACHE code in my wp-config.php file – just above the define(‘DB_NAME’, ‘your_db_name’); as stated by TAWANDA and removed it – and so far my home page, which was completely white, is holding!
I could log in via admin, and saw all my content, but at the URL the home page was white.
FIXED with crossed fingers!
Many thanks wpbeginner crowd!
Jan
Juan Jose Hernandez Cruz
I cannot even log in I have a blank screen. what do you suggest please help
LaQuata
I had the same issue and I did the replacing the theme. This work for me.
Sam
Had this same problem when updating my wordpress plug-ins. I accidently clicked on a link while a couple of plug-ins were updating. The site was okay but could not get into the admin section. Log-in was blank. After reading this article tried changing the plug-ins file name. Admin was still blank and site now wouldn’t load. Change the plug-in folder back to its correct name.
I didn’t delete the theme since this would be a headache to ressurect, I have text widget areas with code and all of this would delete. Instead skipped to the error fix, under “other suggestions” and placed the script in the wp-config.php file. An error popped up for a “google analytics plug-in”. I ftp’d in and changed the name of the folder for that plug-in which fixed the problem.
I could now log-in to the admin area. I then checked the name of the plug-in and found the plug-in through the wordpress “new plug-in” feature. Loaded it in then deleted it. Did this to clear it out of the database. Haven’t reinstalled it yet. Enough headaches for one day
Hope this helps someone…
Paola
I have a problem inside my WordPress admin panel. I can get in but then I get the
white screen of death when I try to edit comments and the like and I cannot
seem to get to use my dashboard. I have tried deactivating plugins and also
re-installing a fresh copy of WordPress but this didn’t seem to help. I also tried replacing my
current theme with a default twenty ten theme but that seemed difficult and I
am not sure I was able to do so. The article also suggested
using the WordPress debug function to see what type of errors are being
outputted. I did manage to add the suggested code in my wp-config.php file and
I got some messages but I am not very good with code so I don’t really
understand what is being said. Any suggestions?
Henry
did you try increase the memory by
define(‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ‘128M’); in wp-config
Pat
I tried everything listed on this post to no avail. I finally found the
fix for my situation! My problem was related to an older versions of
WP: 3.3.1.
I looked at the error_log file in the wp-admin
directory and saw the following error: “PHP Fatal error: Access to
undeclared static property: WP_Screen::$this in
/home2/bellex/public_html/wp-admin/includes/screen.php on line 706”
I had things setup using the WordPress debug function described above.
Anyhow this error led me to a website that directed me on how to alter the screen.php file. See this site for details:
http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/127427/how-to-fix-empty-dashboard-issue-in-wordpress
Gerle Haggard
Like Nese, this simply explained solution was the answer, Thank you, thank you!
Steven
Remove the extra spaces at the bottom of function.php save my life! Many Thanks!
WPBeginner Staff
Yes you can delete and reinstall a theme. However, you will also loose any other customizations you made to the theme.
Veronca
Thanks a lot for the help. I add some code to my Cron Job. I deactivated all my network plugins and asked hostgator to increase my memory. The last thing I need is the white screen of death during production. My site has been down all day, but now its back up. THANKS AGAIN!!
Bboo
Can I just delete the the entire theme file. And re-install it? Will that fix the white screen? I was working on the .php, but now looking at the files, i have NO IDEA which one i was in!!
Nese
Thank you so much. This post and this comment solved it for me.
You’ve made my day.
Bboo
How is everyone having to option to see pages?? When I login I ONLY see BLANK PAGE. No options, no links, no files. NOTHING!! Someone please help!!
Eduardo Flores
A month later but… Maybe you have to check your files via FTP
WPBeginner Staff
You can use an FTP client to access files on your web server. Locate the file you edited earlier and undo the changes you made to it.
You can also use the File Manager in your web hosting account’s cPanel dashboard.
WPBeginner Staff
You can use the File Manager from your cPanel account to edit the php file.
Morgan
I fixed my white screen of death by deleting the code I had written just before it crashed. I did that through the Bluehost file manager. I found my website file (the wordpress install file), then went into wp content, found the theme I was using, then opened the functions file (to fix the theme’s function .php file).
Piotr
Hi there, I am having the same problem and tried literally everything
how did you fix the functions file?
Laura
Thanks!!! That’s exactly what I had to do – thanks for spelling it all out for me!
Morgan
I just found this article about how to do things on the site through Bluehost. But since I know it’s not a plugin problem; I know it’s my .php file, is there something else I can do? Is there an outside way to access my .php file (via Bluehost)? I’m sorry but I am freaking out over here.
https://my.bluehost.com/cgi/help/white-screen-of-death
Morgan
Hi, thank you for telling me what this is. I tried putting in the code from your how-to-avoid-no-thumbnail-issue-while-sharing-post-on-facebook post, and I’m sure I’ve corrupted a file doing something wrong. I can’t get anywhere, it’s all white. How do I disable plugins or go to a default theme this way? I’m going to lose so much work, aren’t I?!???
Mark
Rather than deleting a potentially broken theme, you can just rename it. WordPress will still fall back to a default and it saves the bother of backing up & deleting.
imLOST
I had extra spaces at the bottom of my functions.php file.
After the closing ?> tag. Cleared them up and all was good!
Hasan Shahzad
I have got it fixed by renaming plugins folder to plugin, Wordpress deactivated my all plugins and I was able to access WP-Admin, I tried to activate all plugins manually, however one plugin returned fatal error while activating itself “(include_path=’.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php’)” Then I got it, that plugin was creating mess. Now my blog works fine.
WPBeginner Staff
Check out How to Fix Syntax Error in WordPress
Beetzy Chase
Thank you for the article. I did fix my site. Your article just got my fix it thoughts going in the correct direction, nice reads like this make programming a little less lonely
gaurav
Hi Admin,
please help
Just Now I got an error. my wordpress site is not working even wp-admin also not working, i was doing some changes on footer and have done small change. after saving my wordpress editor. my site not opening and also wp-admin not opening,
I am getting this error Parse error:
syntax error, unexpected end of file in /home/content/p3pnexwpnas01_data02/60/2213460/html/wp-content/themes/fashionistas/functions.php on line 295
i am using wordpress managed hosting from godaddy.
When i am trying to open wordpress admin and my website. both are not opening, returning that error only .
Please help.
Thanks in advance
Anindyo Yudhistiro
I have add
error_reporting(E_ALL); ini_set(‘display_errors’, 1);
define( ‘WP_DEBUG’, true);
on my wp-config file, but still didn’t get the error..