White screen of death and fatal errors in WordPress

You load your website – and it’s just a white screen. No message, no error code, nothing to guide you. This mysterious problem is known as the White Screen of Death (WSOD), and it’s one of the most common issues on older WordPress sites.

Usually caused by a faulty plugin, theme conflict, or a server running out of memory, the WSOD can be tricky because it hides the root cause. But the fix often isn’t as dramatic as the name suggests. In this guide, we’ll walk through how to identify what’s causing it and get your site working again – step by step.

Step 1: Enable WordPress debugging

Let’s get some clues.

1. Open your site’s root directory via File Manager or FTP.
2. Find the file called wp-config.php.
3. Just before the line that says /* That’s all, stop editing! */, add this:
   define( 'WP_DEBUG', true );
define( 'WP_DEBUG_LOG', true );
define( 'WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', false );
4. Save the file.

Now WordPress will log any errors to /wp-content/debug.log. Open that file to see what’s going wrong.

Step 2: Disable all plugins

If you can’t access the dashboard:

1. Go to /wp-content/plugins/ via FTP or File Manager.
2. Rename the entire plugins folder to plugins-disabled.
3. Reload your site. If it comes back, you know a plugin was the cause.

To find the specific one:

1. Rename the folder back to plugins
2. Then rename each plugin folder individually to reactivate them one by one until the problem returns.

Step 3: Switch to a default theme

Still seeing a blank screen?

1. Go to /wp-content/themes/
2. Rename your current theme’s folder (e.g., mytheme → mytheme-broken)
3. WordPress will fall back to a default theme like Twenty Twenty-One (if available)

If the site loads after this, your theme is the issue.

Step 4: Check for PHP or memory issues

Some WSODs happen because WordPress hits the memory limit.

To increase it, edit wp-config.php again.
Add this line:
define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '256M');

Still blank? Contact our support team to make sure the server’s PHP version is compatible with your WordPress version.

Step 5: Restore from a backup (if needed)

If none of the above steps work – or if things got worse – it might be time to roll back to a working version of your site.
If you need assistance with any of these steps or the whole deal, you may also let know our support team to have a look and fix it for you.