WordPress fix to blank screen or blank page or dashboard

Getting a blank screen or blank page or dashboard under your WordPress powered website? Relax! You are not the single person to face the issue and I have sum up all the possible solutions here which will sure help you out to solve the issue.

This annoying problem is also known as WordPress white screen of death and is frustrating because it locks you out of your WordPress admin panel. Before we attempt to fix it, make sure you have sufficient backups.

Fix to blank screen by Deactivating all plugins

This could be an issue with a plugin that you are running. Use these instructions on Deactivate plugins when not able to access dashboard in detail or follow these steps:

1. Rename plugins folder to _plugins under wp-content folder at your WordPress installation.
2. Check if your dashboard is working fine? If this works then problem is with specific plugin. Rename _plugins folder back to plugins.
3. Deactivate all plugins under that plugins folder via renaming them.
4. Activate each plugin one by one, by reverting back it’s original name and checking dashboard to find the problematic plugin.

You should also delete inactive plugins after fixing the issue as they can also cause problems.

Fix to blank page by Enabling default theme

If the plugin troubleshooting doesn’t fix the issue, then you should try replacing your current theme with a default Twenty Fourteen theme.

The idea to deactivate current theme and activate default theme is almost same as I mentioned for plugins. Difference is only that you have to only rename your active theme to something else instead of plugins.

Go to wp-content\themes directory under your WordPress installation and rename your current theme to  _themes. This will automatically deactivate your current theme and replace it with the WordPress default theme.

Alternatively, you can go in your phpMyAdmin and update the database for wp_options table .

• option_value for template and stylesheet to twentyfourteen.
• option_value for current_theme to Twenty Fourteen.

If this fixes the issue, then there is something wrong with theme’s functions.php file. Even few extra spaces at the top or bottom or a poorly coded function in your theme’s functions.php file can cause this as well. You should consider fixing them.

If you already deleted WordPress default Twenty Fourteen theme then you can download from here and manually upload using FTP.

Fix to blank page or dashboard by re-uploading WordPress

If none of the above two fixes it, then you should try to reinstall a fresh copy of WordPress.

Download a fresh copy of WordPress and re-upload all files and folders except the wp-content folder, the wp-config.php and root .htaccess files. Make sure that you delete the old copies of files & folder (don’t overwrite) before uploading the new ones.

You can also try to running the upgrade manually via wp-admin/upgrade.php page in browser.

FIx to blank screen using WordPress debug function

Use the WordPress debug function to see what type of errors are being thrown. Open wp-config.php file and find the line define( 'WP_DEBUG', true); and replace this with the following code:

Reload the page and you have errors, warnings, and notices to determine the cause of issue. Fix them and remove error_reporting and set WP_DEBUG back to false .

Fix to blank page by Increasing the Memory Limit

Usually this issue happens because your memory is being exhausted. Empty page could be faced because you running out of php memory. To deal with this issue simply add the following line inside main php tag into your wp-config.php file:

Fix to empty dashboard with screen.php

If you see a menu with links present in your dashboard but none of the links works and following error at page’s source:

Fatal error: Access to undeclared static property: WP_Screen::$this in /wp-admin/includes/screen.php on line (some line number)

Then it’s a bug in WordPress causing the issue. To fix the bug update WordPress to the current stable release and

• Open file /wp-admin/includes/screen.php in your favorite text editor.
• On given line number in the error, find the following PHP statement: <?php echo self::$this->_help_sidebar; ?>
• Replace it with the statement: <?php echo $this->_help_sidebar; ?>
• Save the change.

Just remember that you will lose the change whenever WordPress updates with newer version.

Other fixes

A caching plugin can also cause access to backend without any issue but frontend to display empty or blank page. Simply empty your cache and flush server and/or browser caches (if any) to run frontend smoothly.

If you are facing this issue at a very long post page then you should clear the cache as well as try to increase recursion and backtrack limit. Paste the following code in your wp-config.php file

I hope any of these tricks would help you to fix the annoying blank screen or blank page or dashboard for your WordPress website. If you found another solution to work, then please let me know.