How To Fix the Blank Page or Blank Screen Problem in WordPress

You recently installed a new plugin, a new theme or made some changes in the WordPress theme files, and you just see a blank page when you visit your website. You can’t even login to dashboard, as it also shows a blank white screen. What to do now? Fortunately, it can be fixed.

A blank screen means that there is some error in the PHP code on the page that you are trying to display. This is normally caused by an incompatible theme or plugin.

Start by deactivating all your plugins and check the site. If the site is functional again, then it means that one of the plugin is causing the issue. To find that plugin, activate them again one by one, and check the site after activating each plugin. Once you find the culprit plugin, use an alternate plugin that is compatible with your current WordPress version.

Note: How to deactivate/activate plugins without logging into WordPress dashboard? Login to your web server via FTP and rename the folders of all the plugins, like by adding 1 to all the folder names. This will automatically deactivate all the active plugins.

If deactivating all your plugins doesn’t help, then try switching to the default theme. To do this, login to your web server via FTP and rename the currently active theme. This will force the default theme to be the active theme automatically.

Note 1: If your site is working fine but you get a blank page when you try to access WordPress dashboard, and none of the above methods work, then try renaming index.php file present in wordpress plugins directory to index.html.

Note 2: If you see a blank page only when accessing a particular part of your website like pages, archives etc then this is certainly because of an incompatible theme. In this case, there is no need to deactivate the plugins, simply force swicth to default theme and contact the theme developer for a resolution.

Note 3: If nothing works, you can hire a WordPress Consultant to look into the issue.

93 thoughts on “How To Fix the Blank Page or Blank Screen Problem in WordPress”

  1. If you get a blank page when you log into the dashboard (admin panel) then rename the index.php file present in wp-plugin directory to index.html.

    where is wp-plugin ??

  2. By wp-plugin directory I mean wordpress plugins directory, its located at /wp-contents/plugins.

    I think that this line is a bit confusing, so I have changed it in the post to make it more clear.

  3. This is not the only solution. If you don’t have index.php then see if you have any incompatible plugins installed. Follow the steps I outlined above. If you still face problem then contact me.

  4. I have just edited the article to include a way to get rid of incompatible plugins even when u can’t log into the admin panel. Try that, I am sure it has something to do with incompatibility of plugins.

  5. my page is at synchronicityla.com– i just made the upgrade to 2.7, and the admin pages load fine, but the website shows a blank page. i’ve cleared, re-cleared, and restarted my browser, and don’t have any plugins, but the front end of the blog site still won’t come up. any further suggestions?? thanks so much!

  6. synchronicityla.com is working fine, I just checked, which means that its the issue of browser cache only… please contact me if you still face the problem.

  7. Thanks for writing the article. Unfortunately I still can’t figure out how to get rid of the blank page. I cannot access the admin panel as it displays the blank page as well as the actually blog. I tried changing the .htaccess file but nothing happened. I don’t have a caching plugin so I’m not sure how to clear cache folders. Any insight would be highly appreciated!

  8. Did you make sure that all the plugins that you are using are 2.7 compatible? Is the theme compatible? Did you tried deactivating the plugins? Did you rename index.php?

    Please follow the strategy explained in the article and I am sure you can solve the issue within a few minutes.

    Contact me again if you can’t :)

  9. Yes, I’ve done that and it didn’t work. I decided to do a clean install manually instead and everything seems to be working fine now. Anyway, thanks for trying to help. :)

  10. Mayur, I’ve followed all the exact steps mentioned above – changed themes, uninstalled all plugins, renamed the index.php and clear my browser cache.

    The page that I still can’t access is the plugins page from admin. Any other suggestions?

  11. @yam

    You can access whole dashboard, except the plugins page, right? To fix the plugins page, do this,

    1. Write all the plugins’ names on a paper, then “delete” all the plugins folders, this will fix the issue.

    2. Download all the plugins again(use the list you prepared in step 1) from wordpress.org, and reupload them.

    This will solve the issue, if not, then contact me again…

  12. Done that. I have all my old plugins in a separate folder called plugins.hold. And currently there is only Akismet and hello.php in the plugins folder.

    Also noticed it’s not just the plugins page, theme editor and widgets are also blank.

  13. Which indicates that the wordpress files aren’t upgraded properly. Take a backup and reinstall the wordpress.

  14. My problem is little different, but hours of searching for the solution brought me here.
    If just installed WordPress 2.7 for the first time. After the installation, I get a blank page whenever I try to log in.
    my website is: http://www.mixedgrill.nl
    what could be the problem? and how do I fix it?

  15. This means that the wordpress files were not uploaded properly. Please reupload the files and make a fresh install.

  16. I have a variation on this problem. Everything is hunky dory for existing users.

    I can also create/register new users with subscriber status.

    However, if any of these new users have their status upgraded to anything more than subscriber, from contributor on up, those accounts only ever see the “white page of death” when they log in backstage. This is very specific to NEW users. All the existing ones, at various different levels, work just fine.

    Thoughts? I suppose i could cycle through the themes and plugins, but what I don’t get is the way this only appears for NEW users. Doesn’t seem like the problem is with themes or plugins, you know? That would be across the board.

  17. I just want to say thank you. I got the white screen today. Tried all the fix on other website until I found your article. The theme (Vintage) is not compatible to WP2.7. I delete the theme folder and it goes to default theme. Installed other theme and everything looks fine now. Thank you.

  18. @digitalramble

    Blank page means that there’s some fatal error in php. Turn on the error reporting in wordpress to see the error and try to fix that (I know you are a programmer), or post the error here. Once we know the error, it will be trivial to fix it.

    @Ken

    You are welcome Ken. I’m glad it helped.

  19. I’m having a problem which is probably related — my admin and site show up fine.

    But whenever I make a change on admin — publishing a post for example — I go to a blank white page.

    The post gets published, so the site works, but I get stuck in a dead-end white page. I can use the back button — or type in the admin URL — to get back into admin, but its a serious pain to do that after every change.

    I have changed the plugins directory name to plugins.bak and still having this problem.

    Any suggestions?

  20. This is certainly caused by a faulty plugin. Instead of renaming the plugin directory, deactivate each plugin from dashboard, then activate them one by one while checking the publishing thing at each activation. You’ll track the faulty plugin easily.

    Hope this helps. If you are still facing the problem then please contact me again.

  21. I get a blank page after login, and I tried following the steps –
    1) There is no index.php file present in wordpress plugins directory, so renaming to index.html is not an option as I understood from your reply to the first commenter.
    2) Tried to rename everything under plugins and I still get the same problem, nothing has changed.

    For the record, it was working perfectly fine before using 2.7.1 until the dashboard disappeared suddenly sometime in the past 4 days! I tried different browsers and pcs and it still doesnt work. I can access and post from my WP software on iphone though.

  22. I tried everything you said but I still get a blank page. I disabled all the plugins. There’s no index.php insode the wp_plugins folder, etc.
    What else could it be?

  23. I think in my case it might be changes I made to the template. I uploaded a previoes version of my template and I can see it. So I will troubleshoot that.

    Still, it was nice to find a page with answers and direction as to what to do.

  24. @Q

    It is probably the issue with the theme. Try to switch to the default theme.

    @marisol

    Thanks. I’m glad I could help you.

  25. I did a fresh install of WP 2..7.1 and kept getting the error ” you don’t have permission to access this page” with a white screen. After much hunting I found this link:

    Mark has created a patch that will let you into the admin panel and will explain how to change the wp_user_level and wp_capabilities in PHPMyAdmin. He also has a script that you can run to do a force upgrade.

    The only other probelm is that once the script is run, it puts your wp_capabilities to ‘subscriber’ which limits your options in your admin window. If you delete the ‘subscriber’ it then gives you the blank page again.

    Anybody have a fix for this?

    http://markjaquith.wordpress.com/

  26. Instead of messing with patches, I’d recommend backing up the db and other stuff, doing a fresh install and then restoring the blog.

  27. Hello!
    Very Interesting post! Thank you for such interesting resource!
    PS: Sorry for my bad english, I’v just started to learn this language ;)
    See you!
    Your, Raiul Baztepo

  28. It can also be that your theme is incompatible, or that in the upgrade process, theme-related files were moved, breaking the install.

    Solution? Upgrade theme, and/or replace with backup copy.

  29. I’m so glad to find a forum where questions are actually being answered. I’ve searched the wordpress forums and found lots of references to the same issues I’m having, but no solutions.

    Hopefully, you all can help me.

    I did a clean install of 2.7.1 into the directory here: http://www.jimthorpenews.com/people/jeremymelber

    The installation worked fine. But, when I click on the Theme Editor under Appearances I get this message: “Sorry, that file cannot be edited.”

    Same issue with the Plugins Editor.

    And Akismet wouldn’t let me put in the API key so I found where I could hard-code the key in the actual file and I guess it worked but the link to Askismet Stats goes to a “Address Not Found Firefox can’t find the server at .web.akismet.com.”

    The Media Gallery lets me upload photos but then won’t display them: http://www.jimthorpenews.com/people/jeremymelber/?page_id=13.
    I looked at the server and the directory where the photos are supposed to be in wp-content/uploads isn’t there so I’m guessing WP didn’t create the directory.

    That’s all the issues I’ve found so far but I’m worried about what’s lurking in the shadows. Should I just uninstall and use 2.6?

    My host, btw, has been great. They worked on permissions thinking that was the issue but nothing worked. We’ve CHMODed files to no avail.

    I very much appreciate any ideas you have.

    Thanks!
    Kathy

  30. @kathy

    If you are unable to edit the theme and plugin files, its definitely the issue with file permissions, please check it again. There’s a workaround though, just download the file you wanna edit using ftp, edit it, and then overwrite it over the existing file. Since it takes a lot of time, I’d suggest looking into the file permissions first. The media gallery issue again seems to be a file permissions problem. Have a look at official docs on file permissions and wordpress here.

    Regarding the akismet issue, try to put akismet key again, I think it will work this time. The last time I saw this problem, it worked automatically after a couple of hours, so may be its the issue with akismet server.

    And don’t go back to 2.6, it has many bugs which’ll cause more headaches. If you really think that these issues have something to do with installation, then take the db backup and reinstall 2.7.1.

    I hope my comments will help you in some way.

    Thanks.

  31. Thanks. I’ll read the documentation on file permissions. I’m really afraid though that there are more issues. Is 2.7.1 solid?

    Why would I have these issues with 2.7.1 but not with any earlier version of Word Press? Is this something new with 2.7?

  32. Yes it is. The new version is released to fix all the bugs from older versions and introduce new features to increase our efficiency and overall ease of use. Once you finish configuring 2.7.1, you’ll find it easier to use then 2.6.

  33. I ran across this site while researching the “blank page” WordPress problem. I host my web site, http://jkewing.dyndns.org/, at home on a spare, cheap PC behind a modem and a router. At the bottom left is an invitation to visit my “blog” which uses WordPress. Inside my own home LAN, this hypertext takes you to my blog, which works fine inside my own LAN. But when someone outside my LAN clicks my “blog” link, they just see a “blank page” (WordPress’s infamous “white page of death”). This is a new WordPress installation (2.7) with no plugins and no development yet – I hesitate to do anything more until I can fix this problem. Do you, or anyone else, know what may be causing this? It is frustrating me to no end, and I haven’t seen anyone else have this problem on a new WordPress installation …

  34. @John

    This is because of one of the two reasons,

    1. Either your router (or firewall) isn’t configured to accept external connections, which is unlikely, since your website is working fine outside the LAN. But still, check it.

    2. May be you didn’t install wordpress properly. Have a look at this thread.

    Please post here if you are still unable to solve the issue.

  35. Thank-you very much for your suggestions. My router (Linksys WRT54G2) is already forwarding port 80 to the server and the only NAT settings on this router are “port triggering”. As it turned out, I was using version 2.5.1 of WordPress, and I have since upgraded to version 2.7.1 (pilot error). Now, external users outside my LAN can see my blog, but it seems that none of the formatting (styles? themes?) appear to external users and all text begins in the left column. However, inside my LAN, the blog looks fine! Again, no plugins are activated and I am using only the default themes – i.e. no “blog development” yet. I have some screen shots of my blog viewed from both outside and inside of my LAN at:

    http://jkewing.dyndns.org/MyBlogProglems.html

    All suggestions are welcome …

  36. This is obviously because the external visitors are unable to read the style.css file in your /wp-content/themes/yourTheme/ folder. Check the permissions on this folder to resolve the issue.

  37. I am having the same problem and this has been quite intermittent. However this time if I rename the plugin folder it does not give me back any visible pages and I am stunted as to what to do. Help?

  38. @Chriso

    Please rename the plugins folder back to plugins. Then follow the procedure described above to get rid of the blank page problem.

  39. 1. I’ve renamed all cache folders and it didn’t work
    2. I do not have index.php present in plugins directory2
    3. It is the login page I cannot access, so can’t be incompatibility of theme

    it’s fustrating. have a look at cheeserland.com?

  40. @Chriso

    Do this,

    1. Disable all plugins using the second method described here.

    2. Clear the session by visiting this page,
    http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-login.php?loggedout=true

    Replace yourdomain with your domain.

    3. Clear browser history and cache and restart the browser.

    4. Login using this,
    http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-login.php

    Again, replace yourdomain with your domain name.

    5. Now you should be able to access the login page.

    Log into wordpress admin panel. Then activate the plugins one by one by moving them from the renamed directory to the plugins directory. This’ll help you to find out the plugin that’s causing the problem. Don’t use that plugin.

    That’s it. Hope it helps.

  41. OK thanks it turned out to be a case of refreshing the hosting server :/

    Anyhow thank you very much Mayur, you’re a gem to the online community!

  42. Yes, and now try to find the plugin that is causing the problem by activating them one by one.

  43. Thank-you again for your advice. All wordpress files (in /usr/share/wordpress) are owned by “root”. The permissions for most files is “644”. The permissions for wp-content/themes/default/style.css, and all directories above it, are “755”.

    Questions:

    1. Should the wordpress files be owned by root? Is there a “wordpress” user that should own these files? The only wordpress user I could find was the wordpress database user in wp-config.php.

    2. Should the “styles” files have a permission different from “755”? For security reasons, I don’t want to change the permission to “777”.

  44. Read the permission scheme at this page. You’ll get the answer to both the questions there. You can contact me if you still have problems with the file permissions.

  45. Thank you for the post, but i’m still not able to fix this issue. I’ve done everything you’ve stated and crossed my fingers HOPING that this would be the answer to my 2 day dilemma, but unfortunately, i’m still getting the BLANK WHITE PAGE! Here is what i do know.

    1) I have no PLUG-INS.
    2) My theme IS 2.7 compatible.
    3) Cleared the browser cache
    4) AND even re-installed WordPress all together.

    Why does WordPress HATE me?!

  46. Even if you theme is 2.7 compatible, try to switch to default theme. It may work. Also, you don’t have any plugins but do you have an index.php file in plugins folder? if yes, then please delete it.

    If you are still getting the white page, then please post your site’s URL here. I’ll look into the issue asap.

  47. I’m a web designer and I’ve created WordPress themes for a while and this had never happened before. The thing is that I created a WordPress theme and it works perfectly, the only problem is that when you post a news instead of giving you the confirmation message, it goes blank. Why do you think is that?

  48. Thanks i was afraid i did something so terrible and I would never see my website again. I changed the names of all my plugins and it is working fine now I;ll just activate one by one and see the errors Should I change the names back to there original name without the 1?

    Thanks for the post it was super helpful!

  49. @Aaron

    Yes, rename and thus reactivate all the plugin except the one that is causing the error.

    Then if you must use that faulty plugin, either find another plugin that does the same thing or contact the plugin author for the fix.

    I’m glad it helped :)

  50. @Maria

    This may be because a plugin is using theme activation hook improperly or may be some of the installation files are corrupt. First try to find the faulty plugin, if any, using the trick described above. If you are sure that its not the plugin, then simply re-install wordpress.

  51. Saved me lots of time – plugin issue worked in relation to activation of incompatible theme in WP 2.8. Thanks

  52. Thanks for actually answering people here, rather than the WP forums, where questions can languish for months. Trying to upgrade from 2.5.1 to 2.7, and boy I sure wish I hadn’t even tried. Disaster.

    White page: renamed all plugins, as you suggested. Tried the index.php in content both ways.

    Something weird: when I go to mycurrentblog/wp-admin, it kicks me to the login page for my other blog, which I started with 2.7. It doesn’t recognize my login for mycurrentblog at all. Is there a way to get a fresh page to login? Way to change some file?
    Please help!

  53. Thanks anyway, the problem was I was using a wp-config file from the 2.7 file that I had used for my other blog, so it was trying to get over there, and not succeeding.

    I did lose my great theme that I had rebuilt from scratch, though. :( I didn’t know so many themes would stop working with 2.7.

  54. @Donna B.

    I’m glad the problem is fixed. Sorry for the late reply though. Also, I can edit your theme to make it wp 2.7 compatible. Contact me for further discussion.

  55. I tried all of your steps after getting the page of death , I do not use wp-cache, renaming themes didnt change anything, neither did renaming the plugin index file, and before deleting or renaming plugins I thought I would have a look at the plugins that I did have installed and one stood out to me!!!!
    and this is what did work for me ;

    I discovered it was 1 plugin only that was causing the problem , the plugin had its own “cache” folder inside of it !!!

    Once I deleted this plugin I got my admin screen back instantly !

    SO THANKYOU because without your guide I would never had looked and tried a fix .

    To everyone else look carefully for CACHE files or folders as I believe this is your issue !

    cheers

  56. Thought I’d mention one that you hadn’t–I edited wp-config.php as root. It ended up owned by root, and with the default permissions www-user couldn’t read it. Correcting the permissions solved the problem.

  57. good, I think everyone who has a wordpress blog had problems, I do not think there is someone who did not! I have not ever had problems that they can not do .., but I: can not insert media in its pages and in any post, because when you may want to upload media, you no longer appears as a window on the same page but I transferred to another page for “uploads”, here I can upload normal media, pictures appear in the gallery, but when the button “insert into post” a white page, but with the correct page that I want to insert the picture. I want to mention that “dashboard” in “quickpress” I can upload pictures in html.
    Thanks a lot everyone who can help me.

  58. Hi Mayur,
    I have tried your suggestions and even read through the comments but still am having trouble. I uninstalled wordpress and was able to login after reinstalling. Then I imported the backed up database and once again I am viewing a blank site. Do you have any ideas? I am thinking its an issue with my database. Can you assist?

  59. Hi Mayur,

    thanks for this post man. I spent hours trying to figure out the white screen after trying to login via wp-login.php. Tried other forums, tried disabling the theme, then came here, read your post and started disabling the plugins by adding the suffix “12” to the plugin file name. I also had added this line of code to my configure.php file define(‘WP_DEBUG’,true); and so now as I disabled each plugin I would get the notification on the login screen as to which plugin was causing the problem. It turned out to be Ozh-dropdown menu so I disabled it and everything works fine now.
    Not sure why Ozhdropdown started to not work,. maybe script conflict with some other plugin. I am using WP2.8.4.
    Thanks again…. appreciate your professional skill.
    Pleas let me know if I can ever return the favor :-)
    Russ

  60. Hi,
    Thank you so much for this post and your help.
    I can’t even get into my admin to disable the widgets. I had trouble with Word Press knocking me out of admin after disabling the Category Write
    plugin I believe. I had just diasabled and then reactivated all of my plug-ins successfully, so I think this may have been the problem. I’m not sure. I have tried;
    1. Tried Renaming the plugin Folder under wp-content folder to plugin-old and the is the error message that I got. I went back in and renamed it plugin.
    a.
    W3 Total Cache Error: some files appear to be missing or out of place. Please re-install plugin or remove /home/content/63/5262963/html/wp-content/db.php.

    2. When I go into this, http://heretowellness.com/wp-admin/edit-comments.php I get an error message that says:
    a. Restricted Area with errors and the words that say Go Back.

    Do you have any other suggestions? I’m afraid that if I uninstall Word Press and then Reinstall and then reinstall the data that I am going to have the same problem. I can’t afford to loose my website.
    Thank you for your help.

    Janice

  61. 1. Remove advanced-cache.php, db.php, w3tc/, w3-total-cache-config.php from wp-content folder.
    2. Delete w3-total-cache folder from wp-content/plugins.
    3. Clear your browser’s cache and check.

    Also you can’t access http://heretowellness.com/wp-admin/edit-comments.php until you are logged in. First fix the cache issue as explained above then login and access the comments management page.

  62. Hi..
    I had upgrade WP from 2.92 to 3.00. I use iblogpro 4 as theme. Upgrade automatically was successfully and site was fine. But there is problem in admin site:
    1. The dashboard not shown all menu that i choose from screen option, just “right now ” menu only and the other not shown.
    2. Screen option is touble too, usually when I click screen option there will be drop down shown , but now, it’s nomore.
    3. I can’t access post menu, but I still acces add new post but when I upload image, after loading image WP then stick and not shown form to fill name image, align or of course I can’ insert it to post
    4. Media menu only show name image that I’ve upload before but can’t show image properties like trouble no.3

    Please help me bro and sorry for my english.

  63. @DU

    Seems like your upgrade was not complete and some files were not overwritten properly. Please upgrade again, manually.

  64. Your advice set me on the right track.

    A tip before disabling plugins, think if you have recently modified functions.php or htaccess or something behind the normal scenes.

    If so, copy and save it in its current form then undo any changes or upload a clean version. The issue in my case was a dodgy piece of syntax in functins.php, still not quite sure what – but anyway all my plugins were and are fine.

    cheers

  65. I’m using wordpress 3.0, the green stimulus theme, and am unable to log in to the admin page — getting the white screen. I have no index.php file. Tried re-naming the plugins. Any other suggestions? Thanks.

  66. Hi, I installed a new theme and then when I went to my page it is the “White screen of death” with no data, or anything.. just white. I hadn’t done any recent upgrades or anything. ANy idea how I can reset my page back to the default theme? Help please!

  67. I just spent 7 agonizing hours dealing with the blank screen. I couldn’t even log in because the admin screen was blank.

    It happened when I tried to upgrade my wordpress version 3.1.

    So here’s what I did to solve it:

    1. I ftp’d an old version of wordpress something like 2.4.

    2. I logged out (as was mentioned) using http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-login.php?loggedout=true

    3. I then received an indication that my database needed to be upgraded. So I clicked to do so.

    4. Then I noticed that my blog was somewhat back from the dead (though not entirely). It would only display partially.

    4. I then started to ftp newer versions of wordpress until I ended at 2.9. From there my blog looked great and I wasn’t about to try to upgrade any further.

    7 hours to complete a 50 cent chore. Ho-hum!

  68. I was editing my theme and I changed the width on the header on the theme functions, what a mistake now I can’t access my login for wordpress, I was trying to rename the file but I have no idea how in the file manager. There is only add new file and add new directory. Please send me any advise through my email.

  69. @Angela

    You need to login using a FTP software like Filezilla and then you can renamed files and folders to resolve the issue.

  70. Thank you for this page – you literally saved our life. We tried re-naming the plugins folder to no avail, but renaming the theme folder did the trick. We had to do this via our webhost control panel. Thanks again

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