How to Fix White Screen of Death (WSOD) in Wordpress

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Has your website ever seemed like it had been gone or corrupted or crashed? Only white space is left on your screen. For those that don’t recognize what this was all regarding, we’ve got a name: the White Screen Of Death (WSOD). Like Microsoft windows has the Blue and black Screen of Death, now WordPress users are facing WSOD that may occurs by many reason. The reason can be script from your theme or plugin conflicts. This causes PHP fatal error, and website become failed before loading any content on screen. The error Information is not enable to display on screen because by default it is disabled in wordpress. Now you have to perform some action to get resolve.

What reasons are there which caused this issue on WordPress website? This can be caused by any of the following scenarios:

1. One of the plugins (may recently installed) conflicts.
2. Problem with theme.
3. Your WordPress application files corrupted.
4. Enable WordPress Debug Mode
5. Memory limits exceeded

First you need to try accessing domain.com/wp-admin or domain.com/wp-login. If it is accessible that means the last two scenarios are wiped out. Now you need to investigate first two scenarios to identify which one is causing that issue.

1. Conflict with plugins

If you have installed and activated new plugin which may be not compatible with the other plugin or with theme or with WordPress application and causing the WSOD. And why it is conflicting with other plugin may have so many reasons. All you need to do is deactivate it, and check your website is back on screen normally..!

the issue is still there then try deactivate all plugins and activate one by one and check which plugin is causing problem. This can be your first step which may take your website out from this WSOD problem.

Tip: If you have CPanel access then login and open File manager, Go into the wp-content directory (public_html/wp-content). Rename “plugins” folder to “plugins_old” or whatever you want to. It will deactivate all plugins (most of the settings become lost) that are installed in your theme in a single step. Now check your website, if it is loading fully or partially, that means the issue is there in one or many of the plugin(s). Now you need to check all plugins one by one after reverting renaming plugins_old to plugins.

You can follow any of the method given below to go through each plugin one by one.

Open your plugins folder and rename all plugins by appending underscore “_” to their names.

For example: there is plugin original name is “revslider”,rename it to “revslider_”

Start remove underscore one by one and check website each time to see which one is conflicting. If you find by removing underscore loads back your website in working condition that means there is a conflict in that plugin. Now remove underscore from all plugins name except that plugin and you have resolved that issue.

OR

Or You can deactivate all plugins by selecting all from your admin dashboard (Plugins) screen. Select all plugins and apply bulk action “Deactivate“ from the drop down menu to deactivate all with a single step.

If renaming plugin folder not worked for your website that means you have to trace issue with your activated theme.

2. Problem with Theme

If it is not yet resolved with above steps, diagnose your theme, this may be conflicting and causing WSOD. The second step is to deactivate your theme from Appearance>Themes and active anyone from default (twentynineteen, twentynineteen, twentyeighteen) themes.

Theme can also be deactivate by renaming it from your CPanel. Opening file manager. find your active theme and rename it (Path: public_html/wp-content/themes). Once you have renamed your theme, WordPress will automatically activate default theme.

Now check your website if the WSOD gone that means lastly you have made change to your theme by updating any code that is may be copied from internet or it was incomplete. If you have done that, you need to revert back these changes to last version of your theme when it was working before the WSOD occurred.

Tip: Don’t forget to take backup before making any hard change to your WordPress website. Sometime these changes make reflects database which become unable to revert.

3. Corrupted WordPress application core Files

If above solutions cant works, then it can be your WordPress application core files issue which may be corrupted and causing WSOD. If it is the scenario then you need to upload your WordPress application to your WordPress installation folder using FTP or CPanel. It is required to download your WordPress application version and upload only wp-admin and wp-include folders.

Make sure “wp-content” folder remains un-touched. Because it contains your website content (blog posts, pages, etc.).

4.Enable WordPress Debug Mode

If you are still unable to investigate the root cause, then try getting the fatal error by enabling the debug mode. It is the utility in the WordPress application to test and debug your website. By default it is set to false but it is configurable and you can enable it by applying following change in “wp-config.php” file.

Edit your “wp-config.php” file that is located at your WordPress application installation folder. Open that file and search for the line:

define( ‘WP_DEBUG’, true );
by default it is set to “false”.

save and close the file.

But how you want to see the debug information for WordPress website?

There are two ways: By displaying on the screen or by generating the log file. Both options are configurable through “wp-config.php” file.

1- To display the error message on WordPress website page; apply following change:  

define( ‘WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY’, true );
by default it is set to “false”.

2- To generate the Log file for your wordpress website to writing error, Exception or any information messages; apply following changes in the wp-config.php file:

define( ‘WP_DEBUG_LOG’, true );
by default it is set to “false”

Note: The log file will be generated inside the “wp-content/” directory with name “debug.log”. You can download and read it on any text editor tool like Notepad, notepad++, etc

It is recommended that not enable these configuration when your website is live.

5. Memory limits exceeded

WSOD can also be faced if the script is requires more memory then the default set for your WordPress website to execute. To update your memory limit see our other tutorial.

How to Increasing the PHP Memory Limit for wordpress

To investigate and resolve WSOD problem for your website, follow above mentioned steps. Hope it will help!

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