How to fix the blank page in WordPress sites?
Most of the WordPress users have come across an issue where their WordPress site is showing a blank page. Usually this is caused by a PHP error. Let us discuss the ways in order to fix this issue.
When ever you are facing this issue, you can enable the debugging mode in WordPress which will mostly show the root cause of the issue. But how can we enable this mode? You can follow the below steps in order to enable the debugging mode.
1. You can login to your cPanel or login to your account using SSH.
2. Open the file manager and open the wp-config.php file.
3. By default WP_DEBUG is set as false in the wp-config.php file as shown below:
define( 'WP_DEBUG', false );
You can enable the debugging mode by editing this line as shown below:
define('WP_DEBUG', true);
4. Save the file and debugging mode is now active.
Once you have enabled the debugging mode, load your website and there you can see the error which is causing this issue. It may be either an issue due to the plugin, theme or there may be some unknown reasons which we will discuss later. There are several ways to fix these issues. Let us go through some of them.
1. Plugins
If the blank page is caused due to a plugin, usually the debugging mode will show which plugin is causing this issue. Once you have identified the plugin, you can disable the plugin by renaming it. If you cannot find the exact plugin, you can deactivate all the WordPress Plugins on your site and if the issue resolved, you can reactivate them one-by-one to see which plugin is causing the problem. You can follow the below steps in order to disable the WordPress plugin.
1. First, you will have to find the document root of your website. If the site is your primary domain, then the document root will be
“/home/username/public_html”. If the site is your addon domain or subdomain, you can find the document root from cPanel >> addon domains.
2. Once you have find the document root, open the wp-content folder where you will see the plugin folder.
3. If you want to disable all the plugins, you can rename the plugin folder to some other name say “plugin.bak”.
4. If you want to disable any particular plugins, you can open the plugins folder and after locating the plugin, renaming it.
It is always better to buy themes/plugins so you can have support from their developers and update to new safer versions.
2.Themes
Another possibility is due to the theme you have installed in your website. If any code in your theme has broken the WordPress will not work. You can change your theme by accessing the cPanel as the admin panel may also show a blank page. How can we change the theme from cPanel. Let us show you.
1. You will have to login to your cPanel first.
2. Open the PhpMyAdmin panel.
3. Locate the database of your website and select the wp_options table.
4. Find the template and the stylesheet rows and edit each row with the default WordPress theme such as twentyseventeen.
3. Modify file permissions.
This issue can also be caused if the permissions of the files and folders are incorrect. Please make sure to set the permission of files to 644 and folders to 755.
4. PHP version
If you have updated the wordpress, plugins or themes which are then compatible only on higher version of php, you will need to change the php version to a higher one and this can easily be done from your cPanel.
5. corrupted files or folders.
If your WordPress files are corrupted either due to any malware or hack, this can happen. If this issue happen it is better to download a copy of your website’s files to your local machine and scan in with any local antivirus program and re-upload it. You can also contact your hosting provider to investigate and scan your account.
6. Database
This issue can also caused if your database is corrupted. Please make a backup of your database and then repair the database from cPanel >> mysqldatabases. If the issue still persists, the best option is to restore the database with a previous date backup.
7. PHP variables
If your WordPress requires high memory limit and you have set a low limit, this issue can be caused once the memory is exhausted. You can increase the PHP values like memory_limit from cPanel.
These are the possible methods in-order to fix the blank page in WordPress sites.