In this guide, I will show you how to fix the wordpress white screen of death. This is a problem that is magnitudes more common than the blue screen of death.
I will also show you how to prevent it from happening again. We will use the official WordPress Support Forums as our resource for this.
We will also use the knowledge we gained in our previous guides, specifically the one on how to troubleshoot your WordPress site.
What causes this WordPress issue?
But before we continue, you may be wondering, what causes the white screen of death?
WordPress white screen of death is caused by a number of different factors. The most common cause is a plugin that is causing a conflict with the WordPress core.
We will cover how to troubleshoot the core issues in a moment, but for now, we will deal with the plugins that are causing the white screen of death.
Plugin conflicts can be caused by a number of things, such as third-party plugins that are causing issues with the plugin that you are trying to install.
Or by a plugin that you are trying to install that was previously installed by another person on your server without properly cleaning up the old files first.
And when that happens, the plugin that you were trying to install can cause issues with the plugin that you originally needed. This can lead to the WordPress white screen of death.
Another cause of the white screen of death on WordPress is unresponsive scripts. This happens when your website exhausts the memory limit that your hosting account allows.
This can be caused by a number of different factors, such as a high number of WordPress users on your website, heavy content management system (CMS) traffic, or a large number of plugins installed on your website.
Anyways, let me show you a couple of ways to fix WordPress white screen of death.
a). Disable Your WordPress Plugins
In order to fix the white screen of death on WordPress, the first thing we need to do is to make sure that there are no plugins that are causing a conflict with the WordPress core. This will prevent the white screen of death from occurring.
To do this, we need to log in to our WordPress admin area and go to Plugins – All Installed plugins.
From here, we need to disable any plugins that are causing a problem.
I recommend that you only enable the plugins that are required for your website to function properly. This will help to limit the number of problems that you have with your website.
b). Increase Your Memory Limit
As we mentioned earlier, WordPress white screen of death can be caused by unresponsive scripts due to memory limits.
To fix it, the first thing that we need to do is to increase the memory limit for your WordPress installation.
To do this, log in to your WordPress admin area and go to Settings – General – Memory. From here, you will be able to increase the memory limit for your WordPress installation. Make sure that you leave enough space for the uploads, etc.
c). Switch to a Default WordPress Theme
Another fix to WordPress white screen of death is going back to using the default theme. You can use the default theme by doing the following steps:
- Log into your WP dashboard and select “Settings”.
- Under “Appearance”, select “Default” and then “Live”.
- This will take you back to the default WordPress theme.
- This is very similar to the first step that we covered in the previous example.
If this fixes the white screen of death issue, head over to functions.php file and check if there is an empty line of code in the end, then you need to remove those, and sometimes that fixes the issue.
This works because if you are using a poorly coded function in your theme’s functions.php file, then WordPress will try to load that file when it needs to execute code, but the file does not exist, which causes the white screen of death.
We will talk more about this later in the article. For now, just follow the steps and see if it works. If it does not, then you will need to find the code that is causing the issue and remove it.
d). Resolve Syntax Errors or Restore a Backup
Another way to fix WordPress white screen of death is by restoring your site backup.
A site backup allows you to have a fresh start if you encounter the white screen of death. This will help to remove any unresponsive scripts or plugins that may be causing the issue.
