WordPress White Screen of Death: How to Fix It

A white screen of death is when your WordPress site shows a blank white page instead of your content, often with no error message at all. It usually appears right after you install or update a plugin or theme, or when your site runs out of PHP memory. In most cases you can fix it yourself in a few minutes without needing to restore a backup.

What Causes It

The white screen is almost always one of these:

• A plugin or theme that was just installed, updated, or is incompatible with your current WordPress version.
• Your site's PHP memory limit being too low for the plugins and theme it's running.
• A fatal PHP error inside a theme or plugin file.

Before making any changes below, it's worth taking a quick backup of your site files and database first, in case you need to undo a change.

How to Fix a White Screen of Death

1. Increase Your PHP Memory Limit

A low memory limit is the single most common cause. You can raise it from your hosting control panel without editing any code.

1. Log in to your hosting control panel.
2. In cPanel: open MultiPHP INI Editor under the Software section, select your domain, and increase the memory_limit value (for example, from 128M to 256M), then click Apply.
3. In DirectAdmin: open PHP Options (or Select PHP Version) under the Advanced Features section, select your domain, find memory_limit, raise the value, and click Save.
4. Reload your website to see if the white screen is gone.

2. Disable Plugins to Find the Conflict

If increasing memory didn't help, the next step is to rule out a plugin conflict. This works the same way in both cPanel and DirectAdmin, since it's done through the File Manager.

1. Open File Manager and navigate to public_html/wp-content (or the folder your site is installed in).
2. Find the plugins folder and rename it to something like plugins-disabled.
3. Reload your site. If it loads normally, WordPress has deactivated every plugin.
4. Rename the folder back to plugins, then go to your WordPress dashboard and reactivate your plugins one at a time, checking the site after each one, until you find the plugin that causes the white screen.

3. Switch to a Default WordPress Theme

If disabling plugins doesn't fix it, the theme itself may be the problem.

1. In File Manager, go to public_html/wp-content/themes.
2. Rename your active theme's folder (for example, to yourtheme-old). WordPress will automatically fall back to a default theme if one is installed.
3. Reload your site. If it comes back, the theme was the cause and you should update it or contact its developer.

4. Check Your Error Log for Details

If the steps above don't resolve it, your website's error log will usually show the exact file and line causing the fatal error, which makes it much faster to pinpoint the problem.

See how to view your website's error logs for steps in both control panels.

If you're not comfortable editing files directly, your host's support team can usually identify the exact cause from the error log.