Reliable methods to fix the White Screen of Death (WsoD) in WordPress

Most deve­lo­pers will be fami­li­ar with it: the White Screen of Death (WsoD). This error is one of the most com­mon when working with Word­Press and can be frus­t­ra­ting. Espe­ci­al­ly when you don’t have a solu­ti­on at hand.

In some cases, the WsoD even pre­vents you from log­ging into the admin area. Espe­ci­al­ly for users wit­hout a tech­ni­cal back­ground, the panic is then gre­at.

But don’t worry — the­re are a varie­ty of approa­ches to get a hand­le on the White Screen of Death. Some of them can be imple­men­ted even wit­hout exten­si­ve tech­ni­cal know­ledge.

What is the WordPress White Screen of Death? #

The White Screen of Death occurs when Word­Press can no lon­ger exe­cu­te its rou­ti­nes cle­an­ly or an exter­nal con­flict (e.g. plug­ins) is faul­ty and pre­vents Word­Press from run­ning.

In most cases, this is the cau­se:

• Plug­ins. Some­ti­mes they are poor­ly pro­grammed, other times they are not pro­vi­ded with the neces­sa­ry updates. Plug­ins are one of the most com­mon cau­ses of the White Screen of Death.
• The­mes. The the­me you are using may no lon­ger be com­pa­ti­ble with the cur­rent ver­si­on of Word­Press.
• Insuf­fi­ci­ent memo­ry. Word­Press needs memo­ry to exe­cu­te its scripts. If this is full, the rou­ti­nes abort.
• Cor­rupt­ed files. This case is rare, but can hap­pen. Espe­ci­al­ly when core files like functions.php or wp-config.php are affec­ted.

How to fix WordPress White Screen of Death #

As men­tio­ned befo­re: the­re are seve­ral ways and means to repair the WsoD. In the fol­lo­wing gui­de, we will go through the steps by pro­ba­bi­li­ty in which they can sol­ve your pro­blem. With a litt­le luck, you can stop after the first step.

But enough of the pre­face — let’s get into the doing.

Disable plugins #

Hard­ly any Word­Press instal­la­ti­on can do wit­hout plug­ins. They enrich our plat­forms and add gre­at fea­tures to the CMS.

But some­ti­mes they are also the cau­se of errors. This hap­pens when the­re is faul­ty code in the plug­ins or a plug­in has not been adapt­ed to the new fea­tures after a Word­Press update.

To rule out the cau­se of White Screen of Death by using a plug­in, you should per­form the fol­lo­wing steps.

1. Log in to the admin area of Word­Press and click on the Plug­ins tab in the left menu. Once the­re, check the box for the instal­led plug­ins and sel­ect Disable in the tab at the top. This should disable all plug­ins. Now go into the brow­ser and rel­oad your page. With luck, the WsoD has alre­a­dy taken care of its­elf. If tha­t’s the case, your pro­blem had to do with one of the instal­led plug­ins. Now acti­va­te one plug­in after the other and check after each acti­va­ti­on if the page still works. This will help you track down the cul­prit.
2. If the White Screen of Death pre­vents you from log­ging into the admin area, don’t des­pair. Log into your web hos­ter’s account and go to the FTP sec­tion the­re. Then go to your Word­Press direc­to­ry, open the wp-con­­tent fol­der. Rena­me the plug­in fol­der by put­ting a -old or -back­up behind it. After that you can rel­oad your page and see if the pro­blem is sol­ved. If so, you can rena­me the plug­in fol­der again, dou­­b­le-click on it and then rena­me each of the instal­led plug­ins brief­ly with -old or -back­up until you find the plug­in that cau­sed the pro­blem.

Fix your long blog articles or pages #

It seems stran­ge, but long artic­les, posts or pages can be a pre­cur­sor to White Screen of Death. The­r­e­fo­re, cor­rec­ting the­se long posts, artic­les and/or pages may help fix your Word­Press web­site.

This trick basi­cal­ly opti­mi­zes PHP’s text pro­ces­sing capa­bi­li­ty by exten­ding the limits for recur­si­on and back­track.

Just add the code below to your wp-config.php to fix the blank white screen and restart the brow­ser.

Again, the first thing to do is to look for the fol­lo­wing line:

/* That's all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */

Then, below that, add the fol­lo­wing two com­mands:

ini_set( 'pcre.recursion_limit', 20000000 );
ini_set( 'pcre.backtrack_limit', 10000000 );

Activate default theme #

Most users use a the­me for Word­Press, becau­se they can­not map the neces­sa­ry func­tions for their web­site with a stan­dard the­me.

If you use a pre­mi­um the­me, in most cases it is regu­lar­ly updated and thus adapt­ed to inno­va­tions in Word­Press.

To see if the White Screen of Death is rela­ted to the the­me, you should disable it and switch to a default the­me.

To do so, log into the admin area of Word­Press and click on Design on the left side and then on The­mes. You will get an over­view of the instal­led the­mes. You can reco­gni­ze the acti­ve the­me by the check mark. Now sel­ect a default the­me and rel­oad your site.

Tip: You can reco­gni­ze a Word­Press default the­me by its name. Word­Press releases a new default the­me every year, which also car­ri­es the name of the year. The cur­rent one is Twen­ty Twen­­ty-Two.

If you don’t have a default the­me instal­led, you can install it in the backend under The­mes. It takes only a few seconds.

Most likely, after acti­vat­ing the default the­me, your page will not look aes­the­ti­cal­ly plea­sing becau­se the ele­ments of your page have not been opti­mi­zed for the the­me. But it’s not about whe­ther your page looks nice, it’s about whe­ther it dis­plays at all.

If it is dis­play­ed, the WSoD is due to the the­me you are using. If it is, check your the­me for updates.

In case your the­me does not pro­vi­de an update, you will unfort­u­na­te­ly have to part with it. Alter­na­tively, you can back­up to a date befo­re the last Word­Press update.

Howe­ver, we would like to advi­se you against this in the long run, becau­se you will not only have to do wit­hout new func­tions, but also accept secu­ri­ty gaps.

Enable WordPress debug mode #

Word­Press comes with an error log by default, but it is dis­ab­led by default.

If you turn it on, the sys­tem will give you all the PHP errors that pre­vent your sys­tem from run­ning cle­an­ly.

To disable the error log respec­tively the debug mode, you have to go back to wp-config.php.

The­re you search again for the line:

/* That's all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */

And final­ly, under­neath, pas­te the fol­lo­wing code:

define( 'WP_DEBUG', true );

If the com­mand alre­a­dy exists in your con­fig, it is most likely set to fal­se. Then you just have to replace this value with true.

To not only acti­va­te the debug mode, but also have a log crea­ted and hide the log mes­sa­ge from your visi­tors, you can also add the fol­lo­wing line below it:

define( 'WP_DEBUG_LOG' ,  true) ;
define( 'WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', false);

The log is then saved as a .txt file in the wp-con­­tent fol­der.

Clear Browser / WordPress Cache #

The cache is a won­derful thing, it allows us to access web pages fas­ter. If web pages are faul­ty and the error was writ­ten to the cache, the page will no lon­ger be dis­play­ed cor­rect­ly. A com­mon reason for a White Screen of Death.

How to clear the browser cache

Anbei lis­ten wir dir kurz auf, wie dBe­low we list brief­ly how you can clear the cache in the most popu­lar brow­sers. (Clear cache in dif­fe­rent brow­sers).

Chro­me

• Open Chro­me.
• Click on “More” in the upper right cor­ner.
• Click “More tools” and then “Clear brow­ser data”.
• Sel­ect a time ran­ge at the top. To dele­te ever­y­thing, sel­ect “Dele­te all”.
• Check the boxes next to “Coo­kies and other web­site data” and “Cached images and files”.
• Click on “Dele­te data”.

Safa­ri

• Open Safa­ri.
• Click “Histo­ry” in the menu bar (top left of your screen).
• Sel­ect “Clear Histo­ry …” at the bot­tom of the menu.
• You can also choo­se “Safa­ri” > “Clear Histo­ry …”.
• From the drop-down menu, sel­ect the peri­od for which you want to dele­te Safa­ri histo­ry and coo­kies.
• Click “Clear histo­ry” one last time.
• This will not only clear your Safa­ri histo­ry, but also your coo­kies and cache.
• Remem­ber that you may be log­ged out of web­sites.

Fire­fox

• In Fire­fox, click on “Histo­ry” in the menu bar (top left of the screen).
• Click on “Dele­te recent histo­ry…”
• Chan­ge the desi­red time frame.
• Sel­ect the data you want to remo­ve.
• Click on “OK”.

How to clear the cache in WordPress

If you use a caching plug­in, you have to emp­ty it as well. Below we show you how to do this for the most com­mon plug­ins.

WP Rocket

Go to WP Rocke­t’s set­tings and click the “Clear Cache” but­ton in the plug­in’s dash­board.

WP Super Cache

Go to WP Super Cache set­tings in your Word­Press admin dash­board, then click the “Clear Cache” but­ton in the “Clear Cached Pages” sec­tion.

W3 Total Cache

Go to Per­for­mance > Dash­board and then click the “Clear all caches” but­ton.

Increase WordPress memory limit #

Word­Press sets the memo­ry limit to 32 MB by default.

To increase this value, you need to adjust the so-cal­­led memo­ry limit in wp-config.php.

You can do this by log­ging into the FTP ser­ver on your web hos­t’s web inter­face and editing wp-config.php in the main fol­der of your Word­Press instal­la­ti­on.

Look for the fol­lo­wing line:

/* That's all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */

Insert the fol­lo­wing line below it:

define( 'WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '128M' );

In many cases, it is enough to enter 128M to increase the memo­ry limit. If this is not the case, you can also try 256M or 512m.

How high the memo­ry limit can be, is deter­mi­ned by your web host. Most pro­vi­ders still go with 128M.

Alternative method via the .htaccess

If the abo­ve opti­on does not work, then use the .htac­cess by adding the fol­lo­wing line:

php_value memory_limit 128M

You can adjust the value 128M accor­ding to the values men­tio­ned befo­re.

Alternative method via php.ini

If the abo­ve opti­on is not available, first edit your php.ini to increase the memo­ry limit.

To do this, con­nect to your ser­ver via FTP, go to the root direc­to­ry of your web­site and loca­te the php.ini file.

After you have found it, pas­te this line any­whe­re in the file:

memory_limit = 128M

Again, the value 128M can be adjus­ted.

Check file permissions #

Here, you can pro­ceed accor­ding to two methods, depen­ding on your tech­ni­cal know-how.

Method 1: SFTP

Sin­ce access to file per­mis­si­ons depends on how your Word­Press web­site is desi­gned, it would be very time-con­­sum­ing to dis­cuss every sin­gle method here. (How to use SFTP to con­nect to your Word­Press Web­site)

Howe­ver, the most important thing is that the WSoD error occurs when your Word­Press web­site’s file per­mis­si­ons do not com­ply with the three basic rules men­tio­ned below.

1. Files should be set644 to or .664
2. Fol­ders should be set755 to or775.
3. The wp-config.php file should be set to 644660, or .600

If you reset the per­mis­si­ons to the default set­tings, you may be able to fix the White Screen of Death.

FTP cli­ents like Win­SCP and File­Zil­la sup­port the editing of file per­mis­si­ons. To do this, you only have to sel­ect the ent­ry Chan­ge file per­mis­si­ons in the con­text menu of the respec­ti­ve file (right-click on the file/folder to open it). Now you can chan­ge and mana­ge the per­mis­si­ons.

Of cour­se, this can be quite time-con­­sum­ing, among other things. The who­le thing is fas­ter with the fol­lo­wing method.

Method 2: Via SSH access

Bes­i­des that, the­re is ano­ther method that we think might be a bit easier for you if you have the neces­sa­ry know­ledge: acces­sing your ser­ver via SSH.

If you app­ly the rule with the fol­lo­wing com­mands from the Word­Press root direc­to­ry, you can fix the tech­ni­cal glitch caus­ing WSoD:

sudo find . -type f -exec chmod 664 {} + 
sudo find . -type d -exec chmod 775 {} +
sudo chmod 660 wp-config.php

Restore backup #

If all else fails, you should cont­act your web host. Most com­pa­nies offer back­ups in their packa­ges — many even on a dai­ly basis.

Some web hosts also allow their cus­to­mers to install the back­up them­sel­ves via a web inter­face. To check this, you should take a look at the inter­face of your pro­vi­der. Other­wi­se, the sup­port is also available to help you with words and deeds.

This solu­ti­on approach is cer­tain­ly not the best, but it gua­ran­tees the page reco­very.

Summary #

We hope that with this gui­de we could help you get rid of your Word­Press White Screen of Death.

The error is also annoy­ing becau­se it does­n’t give you an error mes­sa­ge and the pro­blem could be any­whe­re. In most cases, howe­ver, the pre­vious­ly men­tio­ned mea­su­res should help to sol­ve your pro­blem.

For you as a web­site owner, it’s ter­ri­ble to see a blank screen ins­tead of your con­tent.

The­re are many reasons for the White Screen of Death, detec­ting a key pro­blem is not a pie­ce of cake, as should be obvious from the abo­ve.

If the error still per­sists and you don’t have a way to import a back­up, our Word­Press experts will be hap­py to take a look at it for you.

Cont­act us via our cont­act form, and we will get back to you in a time­ly man­ner.