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Recover from the WordPress White Screen of Death

 

Today I’ve got a short video that will help you recover from the horrible white screen of death with your WordPress website.

If you’ve been using a self-hosted WordPress website for sometime, you might have experienced this, and if you haven’t, eventually you will. The White Screen of Death can be caused by two different reasons. One is that you recently added some code in the editor that is causing an error or a plugin you recently upgraded could not be compatible with your version of WordPress.

In this video, I will show you how to recover your site, when you no longer have access to your dashboard.

Related posts:

  1. Add Two Blogs to One WordPress Installation
Published on: 08 Feb | Video | 12 responses| Tags:

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16 comments
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DimitarDachkinov
DimitarDachkinov like.author.displayName 1 Like

I had the WhiteScreanOfDead for 2 hours. Finally solved the problem by removing the white space above the <?php code. It is very important NOT to change any of the WP files OR if you decide to do that like I DID, remember what did you change before – for example I was plaing with wrappers.php – located in your theme/library and forgot to delete 3 lines of white space…That saved my life!Thank you ALL for your help

texarun
texarun like.author.displayName 1 Like

Thanks Dustin, you are great! I just had this white screen issue and after finding your site I could correct the error that I made when customizing my custom_functions.php file. I am grateful

 

Arun Chattopadhyay

dhartzler10
dhartzler10 moderator

 @texarun I'm so glad this helped! That's exactly why I created it :)

Chichi
Chichi

I know i played with my functions too. But what if you don't remember the exact function error that u did? is there a way to simply undo

Dustin Hartzler
Dustin Hartzler

The easiest way is to redownload the theme file and restore the functions.php file. That will get your site back up and running, then you can troubleshoot what caused it to break!

Chichi
Chichi

I know i played with my functions too. But what if you don't remember the exact function error that u did? is there a way to simply undo

Dustin Hartzler
Dustin Hartzler

The easiest way is to redownload the theme file and restore the functions.php file. That will get your site back up and running, then you can troubleshoot what caused it to break!

Margs
Margs

Thank you so much for a simple yet effective solution. I couldn't access my plugins and I had a fair idea which plugin was causing the problem I just didn't know how to go about fixing it. However, after watching your video I went straight in to my cpanel, straight to the plugin and did exactly what you said. Voila... Problem solved! So nice to be able to update my plugins. Thanks a million!

Dustin Hartzler
Dustin Hartzler

Glad it worked! I was frustrated for hours one day, so I thought I would share the tip so everyone else didn't have to waste their time too!

Margs
Margs

Thank you so much for a simple yet effective solution. I couldn't access my plugins and I had a fair idea which plugin was causing the problem I just didn't know how to go about fixing it. However, after watching your video I went straight in to my cpanel, straight to the plugin and did exactly what you said. Voila... Problem solved! So nice to be able to update my plugins. Thanks a million!

Dustin Hartzler
Dustin Hartzler

Glad it worked! I was frustrated for hours one day, so I thought I would share the tip so everyone else didn't have to waste their time too!

King&#039;s Road
King&#039;s Road

Ok, I've got the White Screen of Death stopping me getting into the admin area after trying to update to Wordpress 3.1. Thing is, I don't know what the error is - any ideas on how I can identify the error in order to fix it?

dhartzler10
dhartzler10

My initial assumption is that one of the plugins is not compatible with the new version of WordPress. I recommend renaming all the plugin folders and you should be able to get back to the dashboard. Then one by one, start naming them back and after each one, refresh the dashboard. Once it breaks, you know which one is the problem and rename it again. If you need more specific information, let me know, I'd be glad to help. Dustin

King&#039;s Road
King&#039;s Road

Ok, I've got the White Screen of Death stopping me getting into the admin area after trying to update to Wordpress 3.1. Thing is, I don't know what the error is - any ideas on how I can identify the error in order to fix it?

dhartzler10
dhartzler10

My initial assumption is that one of the plugins is not compatible with the new version of WordPress. I recommend renaming all the plugin folders and you should be able to get back to the dashboard. Then one by one, start naming them back and after each one, refresh the dashboard. Once it breaks, you know which one is the problem and rename it again.

If you need more specific information, let me know, I'd be glad to help.

Dustin