Guide for Fixing WordPress White Screen of Death
The WordPress white screen of death is a very common error. It is also the most frustrating errors you will have to deal with mostly because it locks you out of WordPress. This error can affect you entire website or part of it.
What causes this error?
The main reason why you see the WordPress white screen of death is because you have exhausted the memory limit. The unresponsive script will be killed or get timed out by WordPress hosting server hence the reason you never see any error message being displayed. You only get a plain white screen. Poorly coded themes or plugins can also cause this error. An issue with your web hosting server can also trigger this error. You need to perform a methodical troubleshooting to identify the cause of the error.
How to fix the error
If the cause of the WordPress white screen of death is because of a plugin or theme, WordPress will be able to catch it if you are using WordPress 5.2. In this case, instead of seeing the white screen, you will see a message that your website is having technical difficulties. You will also get an email notification with the subject ‘Your site is having a technical issue’.
In the email message, you will be pointed to the theme or plugin that is causing the error. You will also get a link that allows you to login to WordPress recovery mode and deactivate the faulty theme or plugin.
If all you see is the WordPress white screen of death, then you have to fix the error manually. There are several things you can do.
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Increase memory limit
As aforementioned, exhausting the memory will trigger the white screen error. The first thing you should do is increase the PHP memory available to WordPress. This allows your script to have more memory to complete a task.
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Disable all plugins
If the error was not fixed by increasing the memory limit, you have to troubleshoot your website. Start by disabling all plugins. This will help determine if the error is being caused by a plugin. If you can still get to the admin area, go to Plugins>>Installed Plugins page and select all installed plugins then deactivate them under the ‘Bulk Actions’ drop down.
If you have no access to the admin area, you will have to use FTP to deactivate them. Connect your WordPress site using FTP client and go to wp-content folder where you will find the ‘plugins’ folder. Right click on the plugins folder and select rename. Rename the folder to plugins-deactivated. When WordPress cannot find the folder named plugins, it will not load the plugins.
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Replace your theme with a default theme
If deactivating the plugins did not solve the WordPress white screen of death issue, you need to replace your theme with the default theme. This will help determine if the theme is the cause of the problem.
Other things you should consider doing include clearing WordPress cache, fixing longer articles, and enabling debug mode to catch errors in WordPress.