The White Screen Of Death (WSOD)

The White Screen Of Death (WSOD)

If, like me, when you see the following error, either when editing or just reviewing your site, the first reaction is panic!

Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, server-admin@mywahosting.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

You try and try again to login and you are confronted by the same generic and pretty vague message that doesn't actually give you any clue as to how the error occurred.

In my case I had been using the W3TC caching plugin with the Cloudflare options (which I have since disabled) when things went awry. Any plugin or file error can cause the WSOD so I am going to give you a few things to try first before you frantically write out a support ticket and sit sweating for what could be potentially hours.

First off I hope you have a recent backup of your site as if in the remote possibility it goes wrong you have something to fall back on, my last backup was minus a couple of posts so thats why I wanted to save my site as is to reduce the annoyance of reproducing the post all over again. I must add that if you are not confident of trying these solutions then don't, immediately contact your server.

I used FileZilla to access my site via FTP so if you are not familiar with the methods of connecting and general concepts I suggest you watch this video by the talented welshy:

FileZilla - Connecting to domain via FTP

Of course if you are competent with any other FTP client the methods are just the same.

1. Connect to your site using the user name and password details contained on your Domains page on WA.
   
2. Once connected access the httpdocs folder and look for a file named htaccess.
   
3. Copy this file to your hard drive then open/view the file on your server. It will open up in your default text editor.
   
4. Press ctrl/cmd A to select all within the file and press delete. The file is now blank. You could also rename your htaccess file to htaccess_old and then create a new one.
   
5. Save the file and confirm the change then upload back to the server.
   
6. Now in your browser try again to access your site. If your site opens and everything looks good then goto WordPress Settings>Permalinks>Save Changes. This rewrites the htaccess file. If everything is sweet then it's job over, well done.
   
7. Unfortunately for myself plugins also contributed to my problems so if you still can't gain access then goto the wp-content folder within the httpdocs folder. Find the plugins folder and rename it by just placing an underscore in front - from plugins to _plugins. This disables the loading of all plugins.
   
8. Try and access your site again if successful then goto step 6. Next is the forensics, try and eliminate what plugins you were using or have recently installed or updated that may have caused the problem and then delete them from your plugins folder. Also check to see if there are any options folders and files for these plugins within the wp-contents folder. In my case I was using W3TC and WPTouch plugins, they both have options folders so I deleted them and the additional files advanced-cache.php, db.php and object-cache.php which belong to W3TC.
   
9. Rename the plugins folder back to it's original name without the underscore and refresh wordpress in your browser. Goto Plugins>Installed Plugins and all your plugins are now visible but all are deactivated. Activate your plugins one at a time starting with the ones you know have been installed since the start and have caused no worries. Using this method you will be able to discover what plugin is causing the error.
   
10. Once the offending plugin is established repeat step 8 and then step 4 to 6.
    
11. All good? If not try and increase the php memory limit. Goto the httpdocs folder again and look for the wp-config.php file and open it. Scroll down until you see the following line:
    define('AUTH_KEY', 'put your unique phrase here');
    
12. Enter this line above it:
    define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '64M');
    save the file and upload back to server. Try to access your site again.
    
13. If you are still having woes then it may be your theme if you recently installed or upgraded that. You can disable the offending theme by just renaming it with an underscore just like we did with the plugins. Select an alternative theme.
    
14. You could also try replacing the wp-includes and wp-admin folders from the same version of WordPress you had installed by using the install folders downloaded from WordPress.org.
    
15. If the above steps haven't solved your problem then it's time to contact your server and play the waiting game. Make sure you give them a detailed description of the site, the error you received and what you were doing prior to the crash.

I hope this tutorial helped you get your site and your sanity back. On a closing note I am guilty of not backing up my site as often as I should. It is recommended that you backup before any plugin, theme or core update or install just to be on the safe side. I know my attitude has changed after my recent incident, once bitten twice shy.