There’s nothing worse than browsing your WordPress website and suddenly meeting the white screen of death (WSOD). This error prevents administrators and visitors from accessing your site. WordPress white death of screen(WDOS) is one of the most common errors in WordPress. This is also one of the most frustrating problems because there are no error messages and you are locked out of WordPress. Another problem with dead white screen errors is that sometimes it affects only one part of the website. For example, you might only see the white screen of death in the WordPress administration area, while everything else works normally. In other cases, you may only see it on a specific post, and everything else is fine. In this article, we’ll show you how to fix the WordPress white death screen by looking at different solutions.
Note: before making any changes to the site, make sure you have a backup of the WordPress site. If you do not have access to the administrative area, please refer to our guide on how to manually create a backup of the WordPress database.
Reasons why you can see the white screen of death in WordPress-WSOD?
Most of the time, when you see the white screen of death, it means that the script on your website runs out of memory.
Unresponsive scripts are either killed by the WordPress host server or simply timeout. This is why the actual error message is not generated, and you will see a pure white screen.
Sometimes you might see a serious error message instead of a normal white screen.
Whether you see a blank screen or a “There has been a critical error on your website,” message, it is the same error.
This error may also be caused by incorrect coding of themes or plug-ins installed on the website. Sometimes this happens if you have a problem with your web hosting server.
Since the white screen error may be caused by a variety of reasons, it needs system troubleshooting to repair.
Did the problem occur on your other site?
If you have other fastest WordPress hosting sites installed on the same host account, you should first check whether the problem also occurs on other sites.
If so, it strongly indicates that there is something wrong with your WordPress hosting service. This may be a temporary problem affecting their service, and you need to ask their support for more help.
On the other hand, if the problem only occurs on a website or a specific part of the website, you know that the problem is on that specific website.
Fix white screen errors using WordPress recovery mode
If the white screen of the death error is caused by a WordPress plug-in or theme, WordPress may be able to capture it.
Errors can be captured by The new fatal error protection feature introduced in WordPress 5.2, so you may not even see the white screen. Instead, you will see a message indicating that the site has technical difficulties.
You will also receive an email on your administrator email address with the subject “there is a technical problem with your website”.
This email will indicate the plug-in that caused the error, and it will also contain a special link. This link will allow you to log in to WordPress recovery mode and deactivate the failed plug-in.
However, if you see a pure white death screen with no e-mail or recovery mode options, you need to fix the error manually.
1. Fix the WordPress White Screen of Death-Increase memory limit
Usually, this error occurs because the script runs out of memory and exits in the middle. To solve this problem, you need to increase the PHP memory available for WordPress. This will allow the script to use more memory to complete the tasks it should perform.
You can follow the guidelines in the tutorial on how to increase PHP memory in WordPress.
2.Fix the WordPress White Screen of Death-Disable all plug-ins
If increasing the memory limit is not helpful, or if the memory limit is very high, such as 256M or 512M, you need to start troubleshooting.
In our experience of solving this problem, we always find that the problem is either related to a specific plug-in or related to a theme. Let’s continue to disable all plug-ins.
If you can still access the WordPress administration area, you just need to go to the plug-ins » installed plug-ins page. Select all installed plug-ins, and then select deactivate under the batch operation “Bulk action” drop-down list.
However, if you do not have access to the WordPress administration area, you need to disable all plug-ins through FTP.
First, connect to the WordPress site using an FTP client. After connecting, go to the WP content folder and you will see the plug-ins folder.
Then, click on the folder called “plugins folder” and select the option “Rename”. Rename the plugins folder to plugins deactivated.
Your FTP client will now rename the plug-in folder.
WordPress looks for a folder called plugins to load all plug-ins. When it cannot find the folder, it will deactivate all plug-ins.
If this solves the problem, enable the plug-in one at a time to find the root cause of the problem. Once the plug-in causing the problem is found, you can replace it with a replacement plug-in or report the problem to the plug-in author.
3.Fix the WordPress White Screen of Death-Replace your current theme with a default theme
If plug-in troubleshooting does not solve the problem, you should try to replace the current theme with the default theme.
First, use the FTP client to connect to your website and go to the / WP content/themes/ folder. This folder contains all installed themes on the website.
Right-click and select the current WordPress Theme and download it to the computer as a backup.
Next, you need to delete the current theme from the site. Right-click the topic folder and select Delete. Your FTP client will now remove themes from your website.
Now, if you have a default WordPress Theme installed on your website, such as (218 or 219), WordPress will automatically start using it as the default theme.
However, if the default theme is not installed, you need to install it manually using FTP.
If this solves the problem, you should look at the functions. php file for the topic. If there is extra space at the bottom of the file, you need to delete it. Sometimes this can solve the problem.
If you use an incorrectly coded function in the functions.php file of the topic, it may also cause a white screen of death errors.
Consider downloading a new copy of your theme from its source and installing it.
4.Fix the WordPress White Screen of Death-Active debug mode to catch errors
If there is no help so far, the next step is to open debugging in WordPress. This will allow you to view the error type of the output.
Add the below-mentioned code to the wp-config.php file.
| 1 2 | define( 'WP_DEBUG', true);define( 'WP_DEBUG_LOG', true ); |
Once this is added, the blank screen will now have errors, warnings, and notifications. These can help you determine the root cause.
If you can’t detect any errors, you may still want to check the debug log. Just use the FTP client to access the WP content folder on the website. In the WP content folder, you will find a new debug. Logfile that contains a log of all errors, notifications, and warnings.
5.Clear or delete WordPress cache
Sometimes, you may have access to the back end, but the front end of the site has a white death screen. This may be due to the cache plug-in. Just clear the cache.
For detailed instructions, see our guide on how to clear the cache in WordPress.
6.Fixed long articles
If you only have a white death screen on a long article or page, this trick may work.
This technique basically improves PHP’s text processing power by adding recursion and backtracking restrictions. You can paste the following code into the wp-config.php file.
| 1 2 3 | /** Trick for long posts */ini_set('pcre.recursion_limit',20000000);ini_set('pcre.backtrack_limit',10000000); |
We understand that this is a very frustrating mistake, and we hope that one of the above skills can solve this problem for you. You may also want to see our WordPress troubleshooting guide, which describes the steps you should take to capture and fix WordPress problems yourself.
We would like to hear about your problems, questions, and suggestions. So feel free to contact us.
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