The “white screen of death” is WordPress showing you nothing at all — no error, just a blank page. It’s unsettling because there’s no obvious clue, but the causes are few and the fixes are reliable.
First, turn on error reporting
The blank page is hiding a real error. Reveal it by editing wp-config.php and changing the debug line to:
define('WP_DEBUG', true);
define('WP_DEBUG_LOG', true);
define('WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', false);Reload the page, then check wp-content/debug.log. The actual error — a specific plugin file, a memory limit, a fatal PHP error — will be waiting there. This one step turns guesswork into a fix.
Rule out plugins
If you can’t reach wp-admin, disable plugins in bulk. In cPanel File Manager, rename the folder wp-content/plugins to plugins-off. If the site returns, a plugin was the cause. Rename it back, then rename individual plugin folders one at a time until the white screen returns — that’s your culprit.
Switch to a default theme
If plugins aren’t it, the theme may be. Rename your active theme’s folder inside wp-content/themes. WordPress falls back to a default theme like Twenty Twenty-Four. If the site loads, the theme is broken — check it for a recent bad edit.
Raise the memory limit
A blank screen sometimes just means WordPress ran out of memory. Add this to wp-config.php:
define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '256M');If that fixes it, a plugin is memory-hungry, so investigate which one.
Check for a failed update
If the white screen appeared right after updating a plugin, theme or core, the update likely failed halfway. Restore from your latest backup, then retry the update once the site is stable.
Turn debug logging back off once you’re done — you don’t want error messages exposed on a live site. If the debug log points to something at the server level, send us the exact line and we’ll take it from there.
