How to fix the white screen error on a WordPress website

You are here because your website’s home page shows a blank white screen, ominously referred to as WSoD or the WordPress ‘white screen of death’ by developers.

Maybe you enabled a new plugin or switched to a new theme, or did absolutely ‘nothing’ (terrifying, I know).

Now, while this blank screen is scary , it is usually solved easily once the reason is identified. Therein lies the problem though – finding out the reason for this blank screen needs you to try out a couple of things, so take a deep breath, be patient and stay cool.

This site is experiencing technical difficulties…

If your website is using WordPress Version 5.2 or later, then you probably won’t see the white screen of death. Instead you might see a message that says “this site is experiencing technical difficulties”. When this occurs, an email is automatically sent to the website admin. Check the admin mailbox for your website, that should give you some pointers about whether a particular plugin or theme caused this fatal error on your website. Read more about this feature here.

The process to investigate and solve this is the same as what you would follow for the white screen WordPress issue.

Important: Backup your website

Before you start trouble-shooting, please take a backup of your entire website. Be careful not to overwrite any earlier backup, especially a backup of when your website was fully functional, so that you can restore that snapshot, if all else fails.

1. Clear your browser cache

This may not always fix the white screen error, but is the root cause at times. And you want to start trouble-shooting by eliminating the simplest possible issue first.

To clear your Chrome browser cache

i. Navigate to your browser menu. That’s a vertical ellipsis (3 dots) menu, on the top right hand corner.

ii. Click on ‘More Tools’ and then ‘Clear Browsing Data’, as shown in the image below

iii. Choose your cache settings based on how much data needs to be erased.

More : Learn how you can clear your browser cache for –

• Chrome
• FireFox
• Internet Explorer
• Safari

2. Clear your website’s cache

If you have a cache plugin like WP Rocket, W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache or any other caching plugin, then clear your WordPress website’s cache.

If your WordPress website’s front end is blank, but you are able to log in to your WordPress admin area, then log into your WordPress site as admin and clear the cache using your plugin’s settings.

How to clear website cache with W3 Total Cache plugin

• Navigate to your WordPress Admin Dashboard
• Click on Performance-> Dashboard – click the link on top that says ‘Empty all caches’) as shown in the image below

How to clear website cache with WP Super Cache plugin

• Navigate to your WordPress Admin Dashboard
• Click on Settings-> WP Super Cache – click on the button ‘Delete Cache’) as shown in the image below

How to clear website cache with WP Rocket Cache plugin

• Learn how you can clear your website’s cache via WPRocket plugin

Unable to log in to your WordPress Admin Dashboard?

If your WordPress website’s front end is blank, and you are not able to log in to your WordPress admin area, then access your website’s files via FTP or a File Manager on your hosting control panel.

How to clear your website’s plugin cache when you can’t log in to your WordPress Admin Dashboard

• Here’s a step by step guide for WPRocket
• For W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache
  • Locate the “wp-content” folder and then the sub-folder “cache” within that
  • Now delete all files in this folder i.e./wp-content/cache
  • Note: Remember not to delete the ‘cache’ folder itself, delete only the files within that folder.

You could also try clearing your website server’s cache. Nearly all premium hosting providers allow you to do that via your hosting dashboard. Try searching through the documentation provided by your hosting service or raise a support ticket with them and ask them for instructions.

3. Identify which WP plugin is causing this white screen error

If your WordPress website’s front end is blank, but you are able to log in to your WordPress admin area, then log into your WordPress site as admin.

• Now, disable each WordPress plugin, one at a time.
• Check if your website is restored, after disabling (remember to de-activate not delete) each plugin. If not, then activate it again and move on to disable the next plugin.
• Too many plugins? Then simply select all your plugins in the WordPress admin plugins dashboard and deactivate all in one go. Check if your website is back to normal. If yes, then you know it is one of your plugins that is causing this white screen error. You can then do the steps described above to narrow down the problematic plugin.

If your WordPress website’s front end is blank, and you are NOT able to log in to your WordPress admin area, then access your website’s files via FTP or a File Manager on your hosting control panel.

• Locate the wp-content folder and then the plugins folder within that.
• The ‘plugins’ folder should have a folder for each of your WordPress plugins.
• To deactivate a plugin, either just rename the folder temporarily, for example, rename a ‘plugin name‘ folder to ‘no-pluginname‘. or temporarily move it out of the plugins folder to some other folder.
• Remember and note down what you are doing though, so that you can restore it back to its earlier state properly.
• After doing this for each plugin folder, check if the blank page is replaced by your website’s home page. If yes, then you know which plugin is causing the problem. Else move on to the next plugin folder.
• Too many plugins? Then simply rename the main plugins folder to say ‘no-plugins’ and check if your website is back to normal. If yes, then you know it is one of your plugins that is causing this white screen error. You can then do the steps described above to narrow down the problematic plugin.

4. Turn on debugging mode

If your WordPress home page is blank even after you’ve tried all of the above-mentioned steps, then it’s time to dig a little deeper.

• Access your website’s files via FTP or your hosting provider’s File Manager.
• Look for a file named wp-config.php. It should be in the root folder (where you’ve installed WordPress).
• Add this code snippet to the file

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

• After you add this, your website will now show error messages that you can look into and resolve the problems.
• In case you can’t see any errors on the website’s front-end, you can open the debug log file, that will show all errors, warnings and notices generated by your website.
• By default, the debug log file is created in the wp-content folder (/wp-content/debug.log).
• Important – Remember to delete this debug.log file when you are done and remove these lines that you added as well, from wp-config.php.

Read more : How to use WordPress logs to fix errors.

In Conclusion

Yes, the white screen of error can be terrifying. However, most often it is due to a plugin or theme conflict and can be easily resolved by reaching out to their support team. Still struggling to sort this out? Leave a comment and we’ll be happy to help.

Photo credits : Featured Image by Lukas Bieri from Pixabay