The ‘White Screen of Death’ (WSOD for short) is one of the most alarming WordPress errors: when the page loads, nothing appears except a blank, white screen. Newer versions of WordPress often display this message instead: “A critical error has occurred on the website.” The good news is that the problem is almost always reversible, and the content is not lost.

What could be causing this?

The most common causes:

• a faulty plugin or one that is incompatible with the version of WordPress or PHP,
• a faulty or outdated template,
• Exceeding the PHP memory limit,
• an interrupted update,
• Following a PHP version upgrade, an old extension that no longer runs on the new version.

If the error appeared after an update or the installation of a plugin, this is most likely the cause.

1. Check your recovery email

Since WordPress 5.2, the system has been sending emails about critical errors to the website administrator’s email address. The email specifies which plugin or theme caused the error and includes a recovery link that allows you to log in to the control panel and deactivate the faulty plugin. Please also check your spam folder.

2. Enable error logging

The actual error message is displayed in the WordPress error log. In the wp-config.php file, before the line /* That's all, stop editing! */, set the following:

define('WP_DEBUG', true);
define('WP_DEBUG_LOG', true);
define('WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', false);

Reload the page, then open the wp-content/debug.log file: the last few lines will show the path to the faulty file (for example, wp-content/plugins/bovitmeny-neve/...). Once you have finished troubleshooting, disable logging (set WP_DEBUG to false), as the log file can become very large over time. Our article on WP_DEBUG provides more detailed information about this setting; our knowledge base article on debug mode explains how to move the log to a location that is not accessible via the web. On cPanel hosting, serious PHP errors are logged to the logs/php.error.log file in the home directory even without debug mode enabled.

3. Disable the extensions

In cPanel’s File Manager or via FTP, rename the wp-content/plugins folder (for example, to plugins-old). This will disable all plugins. If the site recovers as a result, rename the folder back to its original name, then rename the plugins one by one to identify the faulty one. It’s simpler with WP-CLI: run wp plugin deactivate --all, then wp plugin activate bovitmeny-neve for each one. If a single plugin is suspected following an update, the article on the 500 error after a plugin update describes how to deactivate it specifically.

4. Check the template

If disabling the plugins does not help, rename the folder of the theme you are using under wp-content/themes. WordPress will then switch to a default theme (such as Twenty Twenty-Five), if one is installed.

5. Increase the PHP memory limit

The “Allowed memory size exhausted” error message indicates that the memory limit has been exceeded. The value of memory_limit can be increased in the .user.ini file, as described in the article on using the .user.ini file; on cPanel hosting, it can also be configured via the ‘Select PHP Version’ interface.

6. Restore the backup

If you cannot identify the cause, or if the issue requires urgent resolution, restore the system to its state prior to the error using the daily backup; the steps are outlined in the article on restoring a WordPress backup.

If the problem persists after this, please contact our support team: the cause can usually be identified clearly from the server logs.