How to Fix the WordPress White Screen of Death

If you don’t know where the problem is, then you need to disable all plugins and switch themes. To do this you need to go to the plugins file in your WordPress files, using an FTP client and then change the name of the plugins file to ‘plugins_disable‘. Then immediately rename the file to ‘plugins‘ again.

This will disable all the plugins. Check your website now. It should display, but it will not have many of the features.

You can do the same with the themes.

If you notice your website is back on and displaying, it is a plugin/theme that is causing the problem. You can switch them on, one at a time, to find out which one is the culprit. You can do this in the dashboard.

When you’ve determined which plugin/theme has not worked, you should look for the reason why. Sometimes this is because the plugin/theme is outdated and needs an update. So check whether there is an update, if there is, update the theme/plugin and then reactivate.

Don’t activate and then update. This will cause the problem again and you will have to start the process from the start.

Sometimes it isn’t that the plugin/theme is outdated, it is that an update has been badly programmed. This means that any changes you make won’t have any impact. Therefore, you need to remove the plugin from your site and find an alternative.

Sometimes, this problem is caused when the memory limit has been exceeded. This seems to be more common with websites on shared hosting. To change this, you need to go to the wp-config.php file through your FTP client.

Then find the line that starts

wp_memory_limit

Change the value after this to 64M.

If that line doesn’t exist, add in the following code.

define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '64M');

This should solve the problem. However, there could be an underlying issue, such as a faulty plugin that is using all your resources. You will know this is the problem happens again.