What Is the White Screen of Death on WordPress and What Causes It

Instead of the expected web page, the White Screen of Death (also known as WSoD) error shows a blank white screen or a mainly white screen with an ambiguous error message. When your website is down, it may be both annoying and worrying. Because of this, less views, ad income, and eCommerce purchases may result. But don’t panic, there are a few easy steps you may do to restore your site to normal operation.

It’s crucial to remember that WordPress sites hosted on WordPress.com are considerably less likely to experience the WSoD than those that are self-hosted. Because WordPress.com makes sure your site has everything it needs to function properly, including suitable file permissions and RAM restrictions, this is the case. With a WordPress.com site, it’s still feasible that you’ll encounter this issue.

What Leads to WordPress’s Blank White Screen Error?

The blank white screen problem in WordPress may have a number of reasons, but the major one is usually when WordPress reaches its memory limit.

This may occur if WordPress is running too many plugins at once or if a resource-intensive plugin is utilizing excessive amounts of resources. Even a poorly built plugin may cause it to occur. The lack of RAM prevents WordPress from displaying any content.

And yes, both the front end and the back end of your website are susceptible to this. Additionally, it may just affect one page or post.

Plugins are not the only potential source of this mistake, of course. If themes
are improperly coded, they may also be the problem. The absence of information makes debugging this difficult since you have to try almost everything.

The WordPress white screen of death may be an indication of a variety of issues. The following frequent problems may result in this error:

Plugin or theme incompatibility

This may occur if you just updated or installed a plugin or theme that is conflicting with your WordPress installation or other plugins.

A poor memory

WordPress websites need a certain amount of RAM to function properly. The white screen of death may occur if your website doesn’t have enough
RAM allotted to it.

WordPress core files that are faulty

A botched update or a server fault are only two possibilities for why this can occur. The white screen of death may be brought on by corrupt core WordPress files.

Additional server-side problems

The white screen of death might be brought on by various problems with your server or hosting environment. For instance, there can be an issue with your database or a lot of traffic on your server.

It might be irritating and render your website unavailable if you get the WordPress white screen of death. You may need to investigate and rectify the root of the problem in order to solve it. Deactivating plugins, moving to the default theme, restoring a backup, or uploading the WordPress core files again may all be part of this process. If you’re unsure how to resolve the problem, it’s advisable to get help from your hosting company or consult our tutorial on how to fix WordPress white screen.