WordPress white screen of death: a blank page is a hidden error message

What you're seeing

You load the site and get a completely blank white page. No error message, no "page not found", no broken layout — nothing. Right-click and choose View Page Source and you will usually find the page is genuinely empty, or stops mid-way through.

Which parts are blank is the most useful thing you can establish early:

• Whole site blank, including /wp-admin. Something loading on every request — core, a must-use plugin, wp-config.php, or memory.
• Public site blank, /wp-admin works. Very likely the active theme or a front-end plugin.
• Public site fine, /wp-admin blank. Usually an admin-side plugin, or the PHP memory limit — the dashboard is heavier to load than a cached page.
• One page blank, everything else fine. A plugin or block used only on that page.

And it usually starts right after something: an update, a new plugin, an edit to the theme, or your host moving you to a newer PHP version — sometimes without telling you.

Why it happens

PHP encountered an error it could not continue past, stopped, and produced no output. WordPress hides the detail by default, which is right on a live site — error messages give away file paths and database names — but it is why you are looking at nothing. The usual causes:

• A plugin fatal error. Either a plugin that has just updated, or an old one that has just met a new PHP version.
• A theme error. Very often a stray character left in functions.php after an edit — a missing bracket or a space after the closing PHP tag is enough.
• PHP memory exhausted. The site outgrew its memory limit, or a plugin asked for far more than usual.
• A PHP version change. Your host upgraded the server. Anything unmaintained for a few years may not run on the new version.
• An interrupted update. Core half-replaced, leaving files from two versions.
• Malware. Less common than the above, but injected code that errors out looks exactly the same from the outside.

Safe first steps you can try

1. Check your email, including spam. When a plugin or theme causes a fatal error, WordPress emails the site administrator address with a Recovery Mode link that logs you into a working dashboard with the offending item disabled. If that email is there, it names the culprit for you and you can stop reading here.
2. Turn on error logging — to a file, not the screen. In wp-config.php, above the "stop editing" line, set WP_DEBUG to true, WP_DEBUG_LOG to true and WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY to false. Reload the site, then read wp-content/debug.log. The last few lines name the exact file and line number. This is the single most useful step on this page.
3. Read the host's error log too. Most control panels have one, and it catches things that stop PHP before WordPress gets far enough to write its own log.
4. Turn all plugins off without a dashboard. Over FTP or the host's file manager, rename wp-content/plugins to plugins-off. If the site comes back, rename it straight back and re-enable plugins one at a time until it breaks again.
5. Switch theme the same way. Rename your active theme's folder. WordPress falls back to a default theme, and if that fixes it you have your answer.
6. Give it more memory. Add define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '256M'); to wp-config.php. Harmless if memory was not the problem.
7. Check the PHP version. In your hosting control panel. If it changed recently, switching back to the previous version temporarily can get the site online while you sort out what is incompatible.
8. Reinstall core. If you can reach the dashboard, Updates → Reinstall Now. It replaces core files and leaves your content, themes and plugins alone.

What not to do