How to Fix WordPress Returns Blank White Page – White Screen of Death

If you open your WordPress site and get a blank white page indicates that WordPress is throwing a fatal error, technically also known as an error 500 or the white screen of death.

Other plugins and their malfunction mainly cause this error. To find out which plugin causes that error, you can activate the WordPress debug mode by editing two lines in the file wp-config.php of your WordPress installation.

Developer who fixed the blank white page error in WordPress

Activate the Debug Mode to Fix the WordPress Blank White Page

To enable the WordPress debug mode, follow these steps:

  1. Login to cPanel or log in to your site via FTP
  2. Use the cPanel File Manager or your FTP client to edit the file wp-config.php
  3. Add the lines below to the wp-config.php or if they already exist, change their values:
PHP
define( 'WP_DEBUG', true );
define( 'WP_DEBUG_LOG', true );
define( 'WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', false );

After reloading the website, all errors will be written into the file wp-content/debug.log.

If you like to see the errors directly outputted on the screen instead of having them written into the debug.log, change the one line to define( 'WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', true );

Now, load the WordPress site again, and the specific error should be written into the debug.log or directly outputted to the screen, depending on the setting.

Open the debug.log using a file manager plugin or FTP and look for a line that says “Fatal Error…”. This line will mention the name of the plugin that causes the error.

Disable the Plugin that Causes the Blank White Page

Now that you know which plugin causes the blank white page, log in again to your server and rename the plugin folder to something else, e.g., wp-content/plugins/yoast_bak
This will turn off the plugin; the white page should be gone after reloading.

If you have difficulties interpreting the entries in the debug log file, you can send us the log file by opening a support ticket.

If the WordPress debug.log file is not created, check out this article.

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Updated on June 14, 2023