WP white screen of death

The WP white screen of death means your site's code hit an error before WP could print anything, so your browser gets an empty page.

• A typo in wp-config.php, your site's settings file: a missing quote, bracket or semicolon. The server stops before WP even starts.
• A plugin or theme crash, on a site where WP's own error page is switched off or that runs a version of WP older than 5.2.
• Your site ran out of memory. The error log says “Allowed memory size … exhausted”.
• A move to a new host, where files didn't all copy across or the PHP version is different.
• An update that stopped halfway and left a file empty or cut short.
• A caching plugin that saved a blank copy of a page and keeps showing it.

What you see

A blank white page. No logo, no menu, no message. Some browsers show it as it is. Chrome shows its own page instead: “This page isn't working” and “HTTP ERROR 500”.

That 500 is a code the server sends back when something on it went wrong. Underneath, it's the same empty page.

Often every page is blank, your dashboard too (the screens you log in to at yoursite.com/wp-admin). If only one page or only the dashboard is blank, only that part runs the broken code.

Your posts and pages are still in your database. WP stops before it can show them.

How to find the cause

Start with what changed last

Most white screens start right after a change. Think back over the last hour or day: an update, a new plugin, a snippet you pasted, an edit to wp-config.php, a move to a new host.

Newer versions of WP show “There has been a critical error on this website.” for most plugin and theme crashes. So if you edited wp-config.php, look there first.

Turn on the error log

WP can write every error to a file. Open wp-config.php in your site's main folder with your host's file manager. Above the line with “That's all, stop editing!”, add these 3 lines:

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

The last one keeps errors off your pages. Reload the blank page. Then open wp-content/debug.log and find the last line that starts with “PHP Fatal error” or “PHP Parse error”.

PHP is the language WP runs on; your host sets its version. The error line ends with a file and a line number. That's where your site stopped.

If the typo is in wp-config.php itself, WP never gets far enough to write this log. Your host's own error log still has it. Look in your control panel, or ask them.

When you're done, set WP_DEBUG back to false. Anyone who guesses the log's address can read it.

How to fix each cause by hand

A typo in wp-config.php

Open wp-config.php and go to the line number from the error. Look for a missing semicolon at the end, a missing quote, or a stray character. Not sure? Undo your last edit.

If you kept a copy of the file from before the edit, put that copy back. Edit it in the file manager, not a word processor. A word processor can swap straight quotes for curly ones, which PHP can't read.

Our page on the 500 error shows a wp-config.php typo on our test site, a WP site we run to try every task before we write about it.

A plugin or your theme

Rename the plugin's folder in wp-content/plugins, say from contact-form to contact-form-off. WP switches off a plugin it can't find.

Can't tell which one? Rename the whole plugins folder to plugins-off. If the site loads, open Plugins › Installed Plugins once, then rename the folder back and switch them on one at a time.

If the error points to wp-content/themes, rename your active theme's folder. Then log in and open Appearance › Themes. WP switches to its default theme, if one is installed.

Not enough memory

Add define( 'WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '256M' ); to wp-config.php, above the same line. Your host may set a lower cap, so ask them if it doesn't help.

After moving to a new host

Check that every file came across, the wp-content folder most of all. Ask the new host which PHP version your site runs on, and match the old one if a plugin needs it.

A wrong database name or password in wp-config.php shows a different message: “Error establishing a database connection”.

A blank cached page

If you use a caching plugin, clear its cache. If you can't log in to do that, rename its folder. Many also add a file called advanced-cache.php in wp-content: rename that too.

A half-finished update

An update that stopped halfway can leave a plugin's files empty. Delete that plugin's folder with the file manager, then install a fresh copy from the WP plugin directory. Its settings stay in your database.

How to stop it coming back

Keep a copy of wp-config.php before you edit it. Then a typo is a quick swap back, not a hunt.

Update one plugin at a time, and open your site after each one. If it goes blank, you know which update did it.

Try new code on a test copy of your site first. Many hosts can make one for you. Before a move, ask both hosts which PHP version each one runs.