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Oops! My WordPress Blog is BLANK!

Filed in: WordPress — October 13th, 2007

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Had you experience blank site after edit WordPress theme files? I encountered the strange error yesterday night.

I was editing the theme file on my local computer and uploaded to server side. Then, I discovered that my blog is blank, totally blank. No error message or whatever, the page source view was blank too! However, changing to default WordPress theme brought the blog back.

Normally, this kind of error is caused by invalid code or corrupted file. I reverted the changed files and re-upload them to server but still get the blank pages.

That’s weird… Then, I re-upload the whole theme folder to replace all theme files on the server. Guess what? I still get the blank blog! Yes, I did disable all the Wordpress plugins.

I had no clue how to fix it. No choice, I asked my server side to restore the latest daily backup of my hosting account. I got my blog back shortly after but losing some reader comments.

*phew* Backup is important. ;)

Have you encountered similar error before? Or, some other weird errors of WordPress? How did you solve them?

Related book: WordPress Complete: set up, customize, and market your blog

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  • haha, yours is worst! mine was just showing some error when readers leave comments on my blog instead of showing "your comment is under review". i truly understand your feeling. what i did was re install the theme and all the plugin. Phiew... It works! Lucky me and you too, Liew!
  • I experience that as well before. Most of the time, I just try to login, if I still can login, I will activate another theme and then activating back to the original theme that I'm using. It works all the time.

    If it still doesn't, try doing a hard refresh.
  • Yeah, I was visiting liewcf last night and I found something weird is happening. Anyway, good to have everything back.. if not i'll lose a place to hang out.
  • i think after you restore a previous theme, clear the cache and probably cookies. before refreshing.
  • Who M I?
    See... I told you liao ma, ur website got ghost, but you not believe.... Now you kena liao lor, "he" come kacau you liao lor... :P
  • luckily you have backup every day. Is it an additional service that you need to pay for your hosting company to backup your data daily?
  • Haven't yet experience the technical problem you face but I had an experience where the main theme change to default theme.
  • LcF
    @kljs: not the cache problem. I changed web browser also the same.

    @who m i?: I know who are you! you were the ghost huh? :P

    @KCLau: my dedicated server has standard daily backup, and I add additional remote backup :)

    @rammel: theme changed to default theme could caused by wp-cache plugin.
  • Hi Liew, it sounds like a php error to me. For most production servers, like this one you're on, they normally have display_error set to off which results a total blank page. Normally php error will be logged inside error_log under particular hosting account, like the one in cpanel.

    This directive is php_ini_all, that means you can overwrite it with custom php.ini or .htaccess file in your php application directory(if apache's AllowOverride is on). Handy when you are trying to do debugging online.
  • Yep this is know as the White screen of death :)

    Usually caused by a PHP error that does not come out on screen as an error message because error reporting is off at the production server (as mentioned by Yien Bin)

    For me, instead of putting a hard coded PHP directive to turn the error message on again, I will try to go to my CPANEL to view the error log to see if it turned up there.

    Just look for the line number the error occured in and use an editor to check.

    Yep, having a backup is also good if all else fails :)
  • Wordpress usually got no such problem. Other scripts show nothing is due to chmod error.

    Wordpress only needs wp-conent/uploads to have the correct chmod
  • It has happened to me a few times.. and it was always plugin related.

    I remembered I once renamed a plugin and it couldn't locate the file when it tried to activate it - the whole blog became lines of codes!
    Lesson learnt : Never rename the plugin

    Another time I was trying out some new plugins and the entire blog 'disappeared'.
    Lesson learnt : Never try out new plugins in your actual blog

    I also had the entire blog wiped out after I did an upgrade.
    Lesson leart : Always back-up

    Liewcf, I agree with you - back-up is very important!
  • It's not Wordpress per se. It depends on your webserver PHP config. Most webhost have the error reporting turned off because these are live servers.

    For me personally I've encountered this many times on different webhosts. Even for non-Wordpress application on customer's webservers, I usually turn on the error reporting globally to see what exactly is the line that caused the error.
  • yea. now I had a problem with my Plugin page. it wont load. still tinkering with it. sigh
  • Hmmm... perhaps explaining it in words is not clear.

    I just made a short video on this "White Screen of Death" phenomena and the solution for it here

    http://www.andrewooi.com/2007/10/18/solving-the-white-screen-of-death/

    Please excuse my stuttering voice :)
  • same here..
    i just ask the hosting to restore daily db backup..
    luckily they cron the backup every 5min like that..
    so all the previous changes back to normal..
  • Ha ha.. I'm the opposite. Rarely do backup and always get burnt because of it. Luckily most of the time I can debug and fix the error when they occur.
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