Is your WordPress site displaying a white page, that has nothing on it (also known as: the white screen of death)? Then there is most probably a fatal PHP error somewhere in your WordPress site. If you want to figure out what is causing this issue, follow these steps:
- access your server file system (via FTP or your hosting dashboard),
- locate your WordPress site installation folder (usually something like /public_html/your-wp-folder),
- you’ll find a wp-config.php file in this folder, which is a very important WordPress file, so be careful with it,
- edit the wp-config.php file and search for WP_DEBUG,
- usually the wp-config.php file already has this line of code in it:
define( 'WP_DEBUG', false );
, if this line is missing, then you can insert it right above the following line:
/* That's all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */
, - once you have this line in the wp-config.php file, change the value from
false
totrue
, so it will look like this:
define( 'WP_DEBUG', true );
- save the file,
- go to your WordPress page, that was displaying the white screen and refresh the page,
- the PHP error, should be visible now; you should copy that error and send it to the support team, they will be able to tell you what the issue is and how to solve it,
- after you have copied the error message, you should also disable the WP_DEBUG, because it should not be enabled on your production page,
- to do that, open the wp-config.php file again and change the value back to false, so it should look like this:
define( 'WP_DEBUG', false );
You can also take a look at this video, for further clarifications:
That’s it! You successfully debugged a WordPress PHP error. Good job! 🙂