Solving WordPress’s White Screen of Death

WordPress has an issue that can be dumbfounding to say the least. An occurrence called the “White Screen of Death” can happen for really any issue; incompatible plugin, theme bug, an update to a file, etc. But it’s the blank screen with no information that is the difficult part of solving the blank screens cause.

To actually get a response from WordPress, and not just receive a blank white screen, you have to switch your site into debug mode. You can do so be editing the wp-config.php file in your wordpress root installation. Find the line:

define( 'WP_DEBUG', false);

and change it to:

define( 'WP_DEBUG', true);

this will switch your WordPress installation into debug mode and you will now most likely see an error instead of just a blank screen.

You can set to receive more error details by adding a couple of lines above the WP_DEBUG constant setting, like so:


error_reporting(E_ALL);
ini_set('display_errors', 1);
define( 'WP_DEBUG', true);

If you’re wondering why the debug setting is set to false, it’s to ignore general errors that can pop-up which that may not really interfere with the general function of your site, but still may occur in WordPress core files.