Fixing Blank, Empty or White WordPress Pages after Upgrade

by Michael Sheehan on June 10, 2009

Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the HighTechDad RSS feed for regular updates.

Just a few hours ago, WordPress 2.8 was release to the general public (for the self-hosted version). I was notified within my admin portal and, after I did a quick database backup and downloaded all of my blog’s files, I clicked on the upgrade button. After a few seconds, WordPress told me that everything was successful. I was pretty amazed at how quickly the entire process took. Note: this is NOT unique to just WordPress 2.8 but also other releases of WordPress!

NOTE: I can help you fix your WordPress (self-hosted) issues. Read the information at the end of this article for more details!

So, I went to my blog’s main page to ensure that everything was working, and this is what I saw:

That’s right, absolutely NOTHING. Some people have referred to this as the “WordPress White Screen of Death“ or the “Blank Screen of Death“ or just “WSOD“. I went to the login page and it too, was not working. Ouch!

But after a few minutes of quickly troubleshooting (since I had been through this before), I corrected the issue. Here are some troubleshooting and fixes you might want to try if you encounter this issue. I hope that you find a solution within this list. If you do, please leave a comment and let me and other readers know! There are three things that you can try: plugins, wp-config and wp-settings. (There may be others but these are ones that have been proven to be culprits.)

Plugins – usually, after an upgrade, a plugin is the culprit. One way to quickly check to see if one of your plugins is problematic is to do the following:

Rename “plugins”folder TEMPORARILY to something else – I changed my plugins folder to “plugins_temp” and then tried the login page again and was able to see it, so, immediately I knew that I had an issue with one of my many plugins. Note that once you log into WordPress after renaming the plugin folder, WordPress will automatically disable ALL of your plugins as a safety precaution. The problem is, in order to do the next step, you need to remember which ones you had active. Be sure to change the name of your plugin folder back to its original name of “plugins”
Enable all your plugins at once – Once you are back in to the plugins section of the WordPress admin, and all of your plugins have been automatically disabled because of the step above, you can try this option by “bulk enabling” all of your plugins. WordPress should enable anything that doesn’t crash it and will disable any plugins that produce “fatal errors.” If any of your plugins are automatically disabled, they could be your culprit.
Enable plugins one at a time - Optionally, if you are having trouble with the “bulk enable” step above, you could try to enable each plugin one by one.

Once you identify the problematic plugin or plugins, see if they have been updated. If they have, delete the ones on your server and replace with the newer versions. Hopefully that will work. Otherwise, just leave the bad plugins de-activated until they are updated.

Empty Line in wp-config.php file – one thing that you should check is the wp-config.php file (obviously, make sure that it is in the WordPress directory, AND that it has the proper DB information). Scroll to the last part of your wp-config file and double check that there is no extra space after the closing “?>” tag. IF there is a trailing space before the actual end of the file, delete that space so that you are sure that your file truly ends with that tag.

Good:

// Get everything else require_once(ABSPATH.'wp-settings.php'); ?> -END OF FILE-

Bad:

// Get everything else require_once(ABSPATH.'wp-settings.php'); ?>

-END OF FILE-

Tweak your wp-settings.php file – First, I don’t recommend really messing around with this file as it is pretty critical to the smooth operation of WordPress. However, I had noticed that when I migrated my blog over from a different hosting provider to a new one (in this case, BlueHost), that when I was activating some of my plugins, I was receiving the following error “Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted” and the plugin was not activating. The way that I corrected that issue was by editing the “WP_MEMORY_LIMIT” setting within the wp-settings.php file. The WordPress “out-of-the-box” settings for this is “32M”, which explains why the memory size was exhausted (by this point, I was pretty exhausted as well). Note, that this error may be different for different hosting providers and may manifest in other ways.

So what I did, and what fixed the blank screen issue for me in the past and with this latest WordPress upgrade, was to change the value of WP_MEMORY_LIMIT from 32M to 64M. After I did that, everything worked just great!

So, my fix took actually all of about 2 seconds, but several hours of research, testing and tweaking to get to that fix.

Update: 12/27/10 – As I have now fixed quite a few of these issues on a variety of WordPress blogs, I have found that the items mentioned above might NOT correct your issue. You may have a script that is infecting your PHP files (I can help remove those), or you may have an issue with a theme or plugin. Additionally it may be another issue. But I can definitely help out. Read the NOTE below for details.

Note: I have received many requests for help each time a new version of WordPress comes out. I have helped a few people out but please realize that this does take time away from me writing reviews and other articles. However, I want to help, so I have come up with the following solution: I will ask for a $35 “up front fee” for me to review your FTP account and WordPress environment. After I receive that initial fee, if I can fix it, I will let you know and you can decide if you want me to proceed with the fix (for an additional fee typically starting at an additional $25). Depending on the amount of work, the additional fee could be a bit more (I haven’t charged more than $200)…but I’m not here to gouge you, just to get your WordPress blog back up and running. I will also keep you in the loop of what I am doing so that in the future, you can do it on your own. If you want my help, please fill out my WordPress Issue Form and I will get back to you quickly. You will need to provide me with both your FTP login information and WordPress admin credentials (which you can change after I fix or review the issue). I have helped people recover from iFrame viruses to reinstalling WordPress, so far with complete success!

Anyway, those are 3 things that you can test: Plugins, wp-config and wp-settings. If you find a fix that is different, please be sure to let me know!

Did you find this solution useful? If so:

HTD Says: Be sure to follow Douglas Adams famous words of DON’T PANIC if you get the WordPress White Screen of Death. It is fixable!

Tagged as: Fix It, upgrade, wordpress, WSOD

http://david-debeer.com/ David de Beer
uhm, okay is my comment gone or being moderated?
http://david-debeer.com/ David de Beer
ok, I think my comment is gone so apologies if this is a double posting — I wanted to know whether you'd ever used Intense Debate and could do a comparison between it and Disqus, and if not what's your experience been with Disqus? Any glitches or downtime?
http://www.hightechdad.com hightechdad
I think your initial comment was held for moderation (but I got the email notification so that I could release it).
To answer your question, I used to use Intense Debate and it worked pretty well for me. But Disqus added some nice features that I wanted to utilize (like Social Media mentions) so I migrated over. I did have some initial migration problem (not due to Disqus but rather some limitations of my hosting provider) but I figured out how to resolve and was able to sync up my comments just fine.
I have not experienced any downtime or issues (other than the initial install) and the Disqus folks were really great in going above and beyond to help me resolve (including manually installing the missing comments and associating my ID user with my Disqus user).
It's worth the change in my opinion.
http://jacek.kruzycki.pl/ Jacek KruÅ¼ycki
I have the same problem.
I tried clean .htaccess, rename plugin and rename themes directories, I delete emty space in wp-config.php and I changed in wp-settings.php 32M to 64M. And still nothing. I also made new installation (on other subdomain) and use in wp-config.php the same mysql base, user and password and I have still the WSOD :/
What else I can do on http://jacek.kruzycki.pl ?
http://www.hightechdad.com hightechdad
Can you post your wp-config.php (without the password info, etc).
Also, you can force WP to use 64M within the WP-config. I believe I
listed how to do it in a previous comment. Also, if you have any
caching, you should comment that out of wp-config and your .htaccess
and empty that folder.
http://phoat.com/ Phoat
My problem came from a conflicting function name in my functions.php file. So my WSOD was completely theme related.
http://jacek.kruzycki.pl/ Jacek KruÅ¼ycki
Now I see there is some problem with DB-cache plugin :/ I don't know hot to fix him…
http://jacek.kruzycki.pl/ Jacek KruÅ¼ycki
My wp-config.php:
/**
* The base configurations of the WordPress.
*
* This file has the following configurations: MySQL settings, Table Prefix,
* Secret Keys, WordPress Language, and ABSPATH. You can find more information by
* visiting {@link http://codex.wordpress.org/Editing_wp-config.php Editing
* wp-config.php} Codex page. You can get the MySQL settings from your web host.
*
* This file is used by the wp-config.php creation script during the
* installation. You don't have to use the web site, you can just copy this file
* to “wp-config.php” and fill in the values.
*
* @package WordPress
*/
// ** MySQL settings – You can get this info from your web host ** //
/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define('DB_NAME', '*****');
/** MySQL database username */
define('DB_USER', '******');
/** MySQL database password */
define('DB_PASSWORD', '*******');
/** MySQL hostname */
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');
/** Database Charset to use in creating database tables. */
define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8');
/** The Database Collate type. Don't change this if in doubt. */
define('DB_COLLATE', '');
/**#@+
* Authentication Unique Keys.
*
* Change these to different unique phrases!
* You can generate these using the {@link http://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/ WordPress.org secret-key service}
*
* @since 2.6.0
*/
define('AUTH_KEY', 'put your unique phrase here');
define('SECURE_AUTH_KEY', 'put your unique phrase here');
define('LOGGED_IN_KEY', 'put your unique phrase here');
define('NONCE_KEY', 'put your unique phrase here');
/**#@-*/
/**
* WordPress Database Table prefix.
*
* You can have multiple installations in one database if you give each a unique
* prefix. Only numbers, letters, and underscores please!
*/
$table_prefix = 'wp_';
/**
* WordPress Localized Language, defaults to English.
*
* Change this to localize WordPress. A corresponding MO file for the chosen
* language must be installed to wp-content/languages. For example, install
* de.mo to wp-content/languages and set WPLANG to 'de' to enable German
* language support.
*/
define ('WPLANG', 'pl_PL');
define('WP_POST_REVISIONS', false);
/* That's all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */
/** WordPress absolute path to the WordPress directory. */
if ( !defined('ABSPATH') )
define('ABSPATH', dirname(__FILE__) . '/');
/** Sets up WordPress vars and included files. */
require_once(ABSPATH . 'wp-settings.php');
http://jacek.kruzycki.pl/ Jacek KruÅ¼ycki
OK. I know what was wrong. I must go to phpmyadmin and flush active plugins table :) Then my admin panel works :D I refresh plugin list and all blog run :D
graceglmcooke
This is indeed an informative hrsaccount post we should be thinking some ways on how to impress our readers and post comments as well, facebook is one of the most famous site now a days
http://simondelliott.com/ simondelliott
Hi HTD,
I had this problem In teh early days your page was loads of help. Thanks man!
I found out that the issue was due to my theme, I renamed the theme folder and it sort of fixed it. I put the detail on to wordpress here http://wordpress.org/support/topic/278684?repli…
thanks again simon
http://www.rohitrohila.com/ Rohit Rohila
I want to thank you for this! After upgrading to 2.8, one of my plugins was giving me the “WSOD”. I renamed the plugins folder and was able to login, upgrade my plugins, and everything is great again. Thank you!
Luis aka stoniK!
HighTechDad, you saved my life! Your fix worked just right.
Many thanks!
http://www.maggiecurran.com/ Maggie
I changed the plugin file name to plugins_temp and that allowed me to get into the admin panel. However, the plugins page lists them all as deactivated and non-existent, so I can't bulk activate them. This is with WP 2.8. Any ideas? Thanks!
http://www.maggiecurran.com/ Maggie
I fixed it by changing the plugins folder name to plugins_temp, then changing it back to plugins while logged onto the dashboard. i deactivated all plugins, then upgraded the ones that needed upgrading, and deactivating the ones that are not compatible with WP 2.8
http://blog.eliotsykes.com/ Eliot Sykes
Thanks Michael for this post, for me it was an incompatible theme issue.
Steps to fix were:
1. Renamed my selected theme folder 'wp-content/themes/tumblelog' (where tumblelog was my selected theme) to 'wp-content/themes/tumblelog-temprename'. This enabled me to get to wp-admin…
2. Went to http://yourbloghere/wp-admin where there was an update database message. Confirmed I wanted to update the database.
3. Went to the Appearance section of WordPress admin and selected a different theme and the blog was back up and running.
I tried reverting back to the tumblelog theme but that didn't work. I'd been planning on switching themes so overall this is worked out well. Thanks WordPress White Screen of Death!
Pingback: Fixing blank, white, empty WordPress pages after update - blog.eliotsykes.com
http://www.hightechdad.com hightechdad
Thanks for the additional steps. Yes, many themes seem to be
incompatible when new versions of WordPress are released. Typically,
the issues are plugins, memory, extra white spaces and themes. I
appreciate you taking the time to write out those steps.
Pingback: Wordpress 2.8 Upgrade mit Hindernissen « StevyGee’s Project Blog
http://www.jiujitsuunleashed.com/ Jiu Jitsu
Hello HTD, I wanted to say a special thanks. You are absolutely amazing. I will be a faithful follower.
My site was in the dreaded white screen of death mode for the past two days. I was at a loss on how to fix. I searched google, came across your site. I read your three choices. Something told me to try your 3rd choice – change WP settings memory from 32K to 64K (my site has a lot of videos, etc, and I did not do any upgrades or installs for quite some time). Guess what. Almost immediately, my website was back up. I adore you! You saved me so much time and stress. Please keep up the good work. Your knowledge and service is sooo….valuable.
Thanks again!!!!!!
karabomb
You saved my life..
just as i was about to crawl into a ball on the floor and cry, your VERY helpful well laid out instructions were an absolute saviour!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
gautam_hn
I've tried everything possible, but unfortunately not finding a proper solution :(
Can you please take some time and look into it personally provided u have time for it. If you can let me know how I can contact you, I'll send you my login details.
Thanks,
stevedesign
I just upgraded a friend to wp v2.8.4. Now all her comments have disappeared. She had no activated plug-ins. I've gone through your fixit steps for wp-config.php and wp-settings.php just in case it may relate for some strange reason to all the comments disappearing. I'm in desperate need of finding a way of bringing all of her comments back. Thanks.
stevedesign
I just upgraded a friend to wp v2.8.4. Now all her comments have disappeared. She had no activated plug-ins. I've gone through your fixit steps for wp-config.php and wp-settings.php just in case it may relate for some strange reason to all the comments disappearing. I'm in desperate need of finding a way of bringing all of her comments back. Thanks.
http://www.hightechdad.com hightechdad
Hmm that is a tough one. Did she use a plugin for comment previously
(most of the main ones will sync back to the wordpress comment area).
Do you have access to the mysql db to see if they are in there?
Another text you might want to do is to export out the comments to see
if WP sees them and then you could potentially re-import them.
http://weblog.licio.eti.br/ Licio
I got this problem after upgrade as well. My problem was just eh plugins directory, I just renamed it and I clicked in the plugins link on the admin page and all plugins were automatically deactivated and I renamed again to the original name and it worked!
thanks for the tip!
phildunseath
Looks like everyone has had different experiences. I was having blank admin screen after login. The things that worked for me were fresh re-install of wp-includes and wp-admin folders. I had tried all the other tips, wp-config spaces, memory limit, disabling plugins, re-naming theme folder and so on. Great support, thanks.
http://www.beheart.org/ Ann
Hi – thanks for providing all the tips, it gave me hope … but unfortunately I have done all of them and still get WSOD. I had the problem some months ago when I started using WordPress, then went to a local install to continue testing and setting up – then the problem started there too. Today I went back to my live site (beheart.org) and could get in to the admin area – yippee, I thought! But then I did the automatic upgrade, and poof, all gone.
Having tried all the fixes I could find here, I have now removed all traces of WordPress, deleted the database and all files, etc, etc, created a new database and uploaded the latest version. But, when I go to the install.php file … I still get the blank screen.
I'm really stumped. I guess something must be wrong at the server end. Any ideas what I can do?
Thanks for your efforts to help this program be useable!
http://www.hightechdad.com hightechdad
Hi Ann,
I tried going through your site to see if I could find anything.
Unfortunately there is not much that I can do without having access to
your DB or FTP. It sounds to me that something odd is going on. You
might want to check with your hosting provider (The Planet) to see if
you have the latest version of PHP installed. There might be something
going on there.
Also, be sure to check again the settings for the memory and the
spaces after some of the config pages.
Let me know how it goes.
http://www.beheart.org/ Ann
Really appreciate you looking in … I did get in touch with my hosting provider, and they advised that (at least for the install problem) it was a permissions issue. Apparently they have PHP installed as CGI and not an Apache module, and the permissions need to be 755 not 644.
I have asked them if that means I have to change the permissions for all files downloaded with upgrades and/or plugin/them installs, but haven't heard back yet – but this could explain why things went haywire when I downloaded various plugins and the upgrade.
Anyway, I now have my site up and running, and will give WordPress more of a go – but will certainly look for a more WordPress-friendly webhost where hopefully this doesn't happen.
Maybe others are having the same permissions issues? Hope this can help.
And thanks again for all your efforts!
Have a great day, Ann
alchemist9
Thanks bro! great post….Helped me very much. Keep up the good work
ibuylogos.com
http://www.ibuylogos.com/store/2009/10/anti-nik…
kezpez
phew! thanks so much for this post – I did the temporary re-naming of the plugins file bit and re-activated the plugins one-by-one until I found the culprit (wp backup) Now everything is working great again. But I have a question about the wp-config.php step: I haven't got this at the end:
“-END OF FILE-”
just the “?>”
is that OK? (sorry if it's a silly q)
Cheers
http://www.hightechdad.com hightechdad
That should be ok. The big issue was really the trailing white space
or carriage return. Glad it worked!
Eric
Thank you HTD, the first solution was the one for me, I'm no longer afraid by the WWSOD!!
Pingback: WSOD: White Screen of Death « Zubir Jamal
seenontvproducts
I really like the widget and have recently installed it, however, iphone wholesale blackberry wholesale seen on TV products china phone mac wholesaleI am unable to modify any of the attributes of the widget. I am not sure if I can or not. The options interface seems to be ineffective. I am currently using WordPress 2.3
Yeaar, super plugin! Thanks a LOT!
thx for this plugin
http://everimagine.net/ Cara
Hey! I tried to do all your tips, but my site still won't come back up! O_o I'm pretty new to WP though too. I also tried to re-install manually the new version (2.8.6). Is there something else you suggest? I'm pulling hairs right now!
The good thing is that everything works: cPanel, Login and FTP, but my site itself…
http://www.johankolen.com/ Johan Kolen
thanks for the post man, I was starting to panic after upgrading to 2.8.6.
But I managed to get it working again after your plugins-folder-trick-thingie.
Again, thanks!
http://www.hightechdad.com hightechdad
Great! Glad that it worked for you!
http://www.ixtentia.com/ custom iphone development
good explanation…. great suggestions… thanks…
http://www.adriannesbackyard.com/ Adrianne
Still a no go for me. I started a brand new site yesterday, no fancy plugins or themes… just the basic and classic. I can access the dashboard just fine but the WSOD is there. I had to add the ?> to the end of my wp-config file, which I thought was strange seeing as how I just downloaded it off of WordPress.org yesterday. I've also done the other things you've suggested. Any help would be greatly appreciated! http://www.adriannesbackyard.com
http://www.hightechdad.com hightechdad
I have emailed you directly a response. Yes, it is tricky sometimes.
http://www.how-2-workfromhome.info/ sarah d
Great thanks for the info
http://www.adriannesbackyard.com/ Adrianne
Thank you SO much for helping me Michael. Your services were well worth the donation requested. I would be happy to be a good referral for you anytime.
deb
i saw you had commented on an error for wordpress can you can you contact me please to tell me if you can help me fix my error PLEASE
deb
i saw you had commented on an error for wordpress can you can you contact me please to tell me if you can help me fix my error PLEASE
http://www.hightechdad.com hightechdad
If you want to fill out the Contact form with your details, I can
follow up with you directly. I have helped a few other people fix
their WordPress issues. I do ask for a small donation for my time to
go onto your server and troubleshoot.
http://www.staffingpower.com/ newyorkjobs
Yeah, sure ask me what doubt you have i will help you. don't hesitate to ask.
Wendy
I want to thank you, Thank You, THANK YOU!! I have been having some of the problems you described for days and I was in a real panic since the client for my website needed their site moved ASAP. Finally, I came across your post and realized it as a plugin problem. Seriously, INEVER would have figured that out on my own…not in a zillion years. What you have done is a VERY nice thing. Thanks so much!!
http://www.hightechdad.com hightechdad
Glad it worked for you! If you (or your client) are in the holiday spirit of “giving”, I have a donation link in there (wink). If not, please be sure to spread the word on the fix.