{"id":6308,"date":"2022-01-26T12:14:29","date_gmt":"2022-01-26T12:14:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cldy.com\/support\/?post_type=docs&#038;p=6308"},"modified":"2022-07-03T13:51:58","modified_gmt":"2022-07-03T13:51:58","password":"","slug":"wordpress-white-screen-of-death-intro","status":"publish","type":"docs","link":"https:\/\/www.cldy.com\/support\/help\/wordpress-white-screen-of-death-intro\/","title":{"rendered":"WordPress White Screen of Death \u2015 Intro"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The WordPress \u201cWhite Screen of Death\u201d is an error that a lot of website owners, designers, and developers dread. It\u2019s a lot like an Error 500, where the bug is tough to isolate. It could manifest as just a blank page, an error message stating, \u201cThis page isn\u2019t working,\u201d \u201cThere has been a critical error on your website,\u201d or any similar variation. It could show up in your website\u2019s frontend, or even on your WP-Admin\/WP-Login Page. Either way, your site will be inaccessible due to the WordPress White Screen of Death.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are a lot of solutions to choose from, though, and you could start with deactivating two main components: Your theme, or all the plugins you use.\u00a0<\/span><b><\/b><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li aria-level=\"1\"><b>How to Debug Your WordPress Theme<\/b><\/li>\n<li aria-level=\"1\"><b>How to Debug Your Plugins<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We will discuss more solutions to the WordPress White Screen of Death, but for the purpose of this article, we will focus our discussion on why it happens and how to prevent it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3><b>Main Reasons Why It Happens<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While the WordPress White Screen of Death presents as something similar to Error 500 for websites in general, the root of the error always starts with PHP incompatibilities:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The PHP version your WordPress installation needs is different from the PHP version set for your website on the cPanel.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Your WordPress installation needs an update to the current version.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Your WordPress plugins need to be updated to their current versions.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As you start from this point in figuring out the error, you might encounter being limited in fixing things because you can\u2019t log in to your WordPress. Fear not, because you can access your plugin and theme files from the cPanel File Manager.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><b>Please refer to these guides on how to do that:\u00a0<\/b><b><\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li aria-level=\"1\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cldy.com\/support\/help\/how-to-navigate-your-file-manager-using-cpanel\/\"><b>How to Navigate Your File Manager Using cPanel<\/b><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li aria-level=\"1\"><b>How to Debug Your WordPress Theme<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li aria-level=\"1\"><b>How to Debug Your Plugins<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3><b>Prevention Is Better Than Cure, Always<\/b><\/h3>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Indeed, you would want to arrest the problem before it even starts. Here in CLDY, we always believe that prevention is better than cure, so we suggest taking these steps in making sure that you won\u2019t ever have to encounter the WordPress White Screen of Death:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Always keep your WordPress installation up to date.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Always match your WordPress installation requirements to your PHP version on your cPanel.\u00a0<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"2\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Please refer to this guide to learn how to do that: <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cldy.com\/support\/help\/how-to-modify-the-php-version-for-your-domain-via-cpanel\/\"><b>How to Modify the PHP Version for Your Domain via cPanel?<\/b><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Always keep all your plugins up to date.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Keep a regular schedule of updating your WordPress installation, making sure the PHP version is matched to your WordPress requirements, as well as updating your themes and plugins. This mitigates the possibility of incompatibilities due to outdated components.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You might want to keep a <\/span><b>Security plugin<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> installed, that way you get to have a quick overview of what components might need urgent updating.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A website owner does not need to fear the WordPress White Screen of Death issue. With proper maintenance, errors can be prevented. And with proper debugging, it is possible to find out which component has caused the error, and deal with it immediately.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For further assistance, however, you may also reach out to <\/span><a href=\"mailto:support@cldy.com\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">support@cldy.com<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, and we will be happy to help!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The WordPress \u201cWhite Screen of Death\u201d is an error that a lot of website owners, designers, and developers dread. It\u2019s a lot like an Error 500, where the bug is tough to isolate. It could manifest as just a blank page, an error message stating, \u201cThis page isn\u2019t working,\u201d \u201cThere has been a critical error [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"doc_category":[40],"doc_tag":[],"class_list":["post-6308","docs","type-docs","status-publish","hentry","doc_category-wordpress-hosting"],"year_month":"2026-07","word_count":556,"total_views":0,"reactions":{"happy":0,"normal":0,"sad":0},"author_info":{"name":"cldy","author_nicename":"loriecldy","author_url":"https:\/\/www.cldy.com\/support\/author\/loriecldy\/"},"doc_category_info":[{"term_name":"WordPress Hosting","term_url":"https:\/\/www.cldy.com\/support\/help-category\/wordpress-hosting\/"}],"doc_tag_info":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cldy.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/docs\/6308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cldy.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/docs"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cldy.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/docs"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cldy.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cldy.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6308"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.cldy.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/docs\/6308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7482,"href":"https:\/\/www.cldy.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/docs\/6308\/revisions\/7482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cldy.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"doc_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cldy.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/doc_category?post=6308"},{"taxonomy":"doc_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cldy.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/doc_tag?post=6308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}