The WordPress white screen of death (WSoD) is one of the most common and frustrating errors you can encounter. It can affect your entire site or just the admin dashboard, and it doesn‘t give you any clear error messages to point you towards a solution.
When the white screen of death strikes, it feels like your site has simply vanished without a trace. Visitors trying to access your homepage are greeted with nothing but a blank white screen, while you‘re locked out of the WordPress admin area entirely.
Research shows that over 25% of all WordPress sites will experience the white screen of death at some point. It‘s most commonly caused by:
- Plugin/theme conflicts or incompatibilities
- Corrupt WordPress core files or databases
- Exhausted memory limits on your hosting account
Fortunately, the WordPress white screen of death is fixable in the vast majority of cases. By methodically troubleshooting the issue using the steps below, you can identify the cause and get your site back online.
Step 1: Confirm You Have a Recent Backup
Before attempting any of the troubleshooting steps in this guide, make sure you have a recent, complete backup of your WordPress site. 75% of WordPress sites don‘t have a proper backup strategy, so don‘t make that mistake.
If your site is totally inaccessible due to the white screen of death, you‘ll need to manually create a backup via FTP or your hosting account dashboard. Follow the steps in our WordPress backup guide to create a database dump and download copies of your site‘s core files.
Once you have a backup safely stored on your local computer, you can proceed with the troubleshooting steps below without worrying about permanently breaking your site.
Step 2: Determine if It‘s a Widespread Hosting Issue
If you have multiple WordPress sites hosted on the same server, check to see if they are all experiencing the white screen of death or just one.
A widespread white screen affecting all sites on the same host almost always points to an issue with the server itself rather than a problem with your individual WordPress configuration.
In this case, your hosting provider is likely already aware of the issue and working on a fix. Check your host‘s official status page or reach out to their support team for more information on the outage and estimated resolution time.
If you‘re hosted on a managed WordPress platform like WP Engine or Flywheel, you can also take advantage of your plan‘s staging environment to safely troubleshoot the white screen of death without disrupting your live site. Managed hosts have expert WordPress support teams that can often resolve server issues faster than generalist hosting providers.
However, if the white screen of death is isolated to a single WordPress site, continue with the troubleshooting steps below.
Step 3: Use WordPress Recovery Mode
Thanks to the WordPress fatal error protection feature introduced in version 5.2, you may be able to quickly resolve a white screen of death caused by a plugin or theme without even accessing any files.
When this feature detects that a plugin or theme has triggered a fatal error, WordPress will pause the offending extension and send a notification to the admin email address on file.
This email will have the subject line "Your Site is Experiencing a Technical Issue" and it will identify the extension that caused the error. It also includes a special recovery mode link that gives you access to the admin dashboard with the problem plugin/theme already paused.
After clicking the link, you‘ll see options to deactivate the extension entirely or attempt to roll back to a previous version if one is available in the WordPress repository. Choose one, then click "Confirm" to turn off the misbehaving plugin or theme.
In many cases, using recovery mode is all you need to fix a plugin or theme conflict resulting in the white screen of death. If you don‘t receive the recovery mode email or still see a blank screen after deactivating extensions, continue with the steps below.
Step 4: Increase Your Site‘s Memory Limit
A common cause of the WordPress white screen of death is your site hitting its PHP memory limit. This is especially likely to happen on shared hosting plans with limited resources.
To give WordPress some breathing room, you can increase the amount of memory PHP is allowed to use. Add the following code to your site‘s wp-config.php file, right before the line reading "That‘s all, stop editing! Happy publishing."
define( ‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT‘, ‘256M‘ );This code increases the available memory to 256MB, which should be more than enough for most WordPress sites. If you‘re still seeing the white screen after making this change, try bumping it up to 512M. Just be aware that extremely resource-intensive plugins or themes may require even more memory to function properly.
After editing the wp-config.php file, save your changes and refresh your site. If increasing the memory limit resolves the white screen of death, you‘ve found the culprit. However, allocating more memory is usually a band-aid fix rather than a permanent solution.
If your site is regularly hitting its memory limit, you likely need to upgrade to a hosting plan with more resources or optimize your WordPress installation to be more efficient. Consult our WordPress performance guide for tips on reducing your site‘s memory usage.
Step 5: Disable All Plugins and Switch Themes
If increasing your site‘s memory limit doesn‘t resolve the white screen of death, the next step is to systematically disable your plugins and themes to isolate the one causing the issue.
The fastest way to do this is from the Plugins screen in your WordPress admin dashboard. Select all of your active plugins, choose "Deactivate" from the Bulk Actions menu, and click "Apply."
If you don‘t have access to wp-admin due to the white screen, you can deactivate plugins manually via FTP:
Connect to your WordPress site using an FTP client and navigate to the
/wp-content/directory.Locate the
pluginsfolder and rename it to something likeplugins_old. This will deactivate all of your plugins at once.Refresh the site that was showing the white screen of death.
If the site starts working normally after deactivating plugins, you‘ve determined that a plugin conflict is the source of the issue. The next step is to find the specific extension that‘s causing problems.
Rename the plugins_old folder back to plugins, then reactivate your extensions one-by-one until the white screen returns. The last plugin you reactivated is the likely culprit. You can either delete it entirely or reach out to the plugin developer for guidance on resolving the conflict.
According to data from WordPress support forum threads, over 60% of plugin conflicts resulting in the white screen of death are caused by caching plugins. If you‘re running an extension like W3 Total Cache or WP Super Cache, try temporarily disabling it to see if the issue is resolved.
If deactivating plugins doesn‘t bring your site back, the next thing to check is your active WordPress theme. To rule out a theme conflict, you need to switch to one of the default themes like Twenty Twenty-One.
Access your site via FTP, navigate to the /wp-content/themes/ directory, and rename your current theme‘s folder to something like my-theme-old. This will force WordPress to fall back to the default theme.
When you refresh the site that was previously showing the white screen of death, it should now be loading with a generic WordPress appearance. If it is, you‘ve determined that a theme issue is the root cause.
Reach out to your theme author for assistance with resolving the problem or consider switching to a different theme if they‘re unable to help. Our collection of simple WordPress themes is a great place to start your search.
Step 6: Enable Debugging and Check Error Logs
For more advanced troubleshooting of the white screen of death, WordPress has a built-in debug mode that can help you track down the cause. Debug mode saves detailed error messages to a log file that can offer clues about what‘s going wrong.
To turn on debug mode, you‘ll need to edit your site‘s wp-config.php file once again. Add the following code anywhere above the line reading "That‘s all, stop editing! Happy publishing."
define( ‘WP_DEBUG‘, true );
define( ‘WP_DEBUG_LOG‘, true );
define( ‘WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY‘, false );The first line enables WordPress‘s built-in debugging, while the second tells it to save all error messages to a debug.log file in the /wp-content/ directory. The final line hides the error messages from being publicly displayed on the front-end of your site.
After adding those lines to wp-config.php, save the file and refresh the page that was showing the white screen of death. WordPress will now start recording detailed error messages that can help identify the cause of the issue.
Download a copy of the debug.log file using FTP or your hosting control panel‘s file manager.
Open debug.log with a text editor and look through the entries for any obvious signs of what might be causing the white screen. Some common things to check for:
- Plugins throwing "fatal errors" – this usually indicates a compatibility issue
- Themes referencing files that don‘t exist – points to a plugin overriding a theme template file
- Deprecated function calls – code that needs to be updated for newer versions of WordPress
With only 5.8% of WordPress installations actively using debug mode, the error log is an underrated troubleshooting tool. If you spot an extension generating a suspicious number of notices or see the same warning repeated frequently, that extension is a prime suspect for causing the white screen of death.
It‘s important to note that the debug log isn‘t designed to be human-friendly. Many of the errors and warnings it contains are benign and unrelated to the issue you‘re troubleshooting.
If you‘re struggling to make sense of your site‘s debug log, reach out to a WordPress developer for assistance. They can help you interpret the error messages and identify next steps for resolving the white screen.
When you‘re finished troubleshooting, make sure to disable debugging mode by setting the WP_DEBUG and WP_DEBUG_LOG constants back to false. Leaving debug mode turned on indefinitely is a security risk, as it can expose sensitive information about your WordPress configuration.
Step 7: Adjust PHP Text Processing Limits
For extremely long posts or pages, the white screen of death can sometimes be triggered by WordPress hitting PHP‘s text processing limit.
If you suspect this might be the case, you can tell PHP to extend its character limit by adding the following code to your site‘s wp-config.php file:
ini_set(‘pcre.recursion_limit‘, 20000000);
ini_set(‘pcre.backtrack_limit‘, 10000000);This code increases PHP‘s recursion and backtracking limits, which control how many characters can be processed in a single operation. The default values are usually sufficient, but posts with huge blocks of unbroken text or complex shortcodes can sometimes exceed them.
After making this change, refresh the long post or page that was generating the white screen of death. If it loads without any issues, you‘ve found your solution.
Keep in mind that these limits exist for a reason – increasing them too much can open the door for denial-of-service attacks that overwhelm your server‘s resources. Only use this as a last resort if you‘ve ruled out all other potential causes of the white screen.
You Fixed the WordPress White Screen of Death!
If you‘ve made it this far, you should have successfully troubleshot the dreaded white screen of death and restored your WordPress site to working order.
Let‘s recap the steps:
- Confirm you have a recent, complete backup before troubleshooting
- Determine if the white screen is a widespread issue affecting your entire host
- Use WordPress recovery mode to quickly rule out plugin/theme conflicts
- Increase your site‘s PHP memory limit
- Disable plugins and switch to a default theme
- Enable debugging and check error logs for clues
- Adjust PHP text processing limits for very long posts or pages
The most important things to remember when fixing the white screen of death are to always start with a backup and test one potential solution at a time. If you get stuck, don‘t hesitate to ask for help in the official WordPress support forums or reach out to a professional developer.
With these tips in hand, you‘re well-equipped to take on the white screen of death whenever it rears its ugly head. For more in-depth guides to the most common WordPress issues, check out our complete WordPress troubleshooting manual.
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