Comments on: Oops! My WordPress Blog is BLANK!

By: Andrew Ooi

Andrew Ooi — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 16:13:46 +0000

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.

By: GempakBEB!

GempakBEB! — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 20:22:49 +0000

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..

By: Andrew Ooi

Andrew Ooi — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 12:50:33 +0000

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

By: colbert

colbert — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 07:31:20 +0000

yea. now I had a problem with my Plugin page. it wont load. still tinkering with it. sigh

By: Andrew Ooi

Andrew Ooi — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 08:15:09 +0000

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.

By: Mei Ling

Mei Ling — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 05:07:52 +0000

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!

By: Rice Blogger

Rice Blogger — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 03:58:13 +0000

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

By: Andrew Ooi

Andrew Ooi — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 23:32:58 +0000

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

By: Yien Bin

Yien Bin — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 20:18:18 +0000

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.

By: LcF

LcF — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 09:03:50 +0000

@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?

@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.

By: rammel

rammel — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 14:17:09 +0000

Haven’t yet experience the technical problem you face but I had an experience where the main theme change to default theme.

By: KCLau

KCLau — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 13:49:03 +0000

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?

By: Who M I?

Who M I? — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 11:56:40 +0000

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…

By: kljs

kljs — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 08:34:17 +0000

i think after you restore a previous theme, clear the cache and probably cookies. before refreshing.

By: Blogging Success Journey

Blogging Success Journey — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 01:15:16 +0000

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.

By: Wilson

Wilson — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 21:43:56 +0000

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.

By: Mr Henree

Mr Henree — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 20:47:34 +0000

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!