WordPress White Screen of Death — Diagnosis and Fix

The WordPress White Screen of Death (WSOD) — a blank white page with nothing on it — is one of the most common WordPress emergencies. It means PHP is crashing before any output can be generated. Bagful diagnoses WSOD for Indian businesses as part of managed hosting support.

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Common Causes of White Screen

Memory limit exhausted: WordPress ran out of PHP memory. Fix: increase memory_limit in wp-config.php (add: define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '256M');)

Plugin conflict: A recently installed or updated plugin is causing a fatal PHP error. Fix: deactivate all plugins via FTP and reactivate one by one.

Theme error: Your active theme has a PHP error. Fix: switch to a default theme (Twenty Twenty) via FTP by renaming your theme folder.

PHP version mismatch: Your PHP version is incompatible with a plugin or theme.

Emergency Fix Steps

1. Enable debug mode: add define('WP_DEBUG', true); to wp-config.php. 2. Check the error message that appears. 3. Deactivate the offending plugin or theme. 4. If you can't access WP-Admin, use FTP to rename the plugins folder.

Frequently Asked Questions

Connect via FTP, navigate to /wp-content/plugins/ and rename the folder to 'plugins_disabled'. This deactivates all plugins.

No — WSOD is a PHP error, not data loss. Your database and files are intact.

Yes — Bagful diagnoses WSOD via cPanel/SSH access as part of managed hosting support.

Keep plugins updated, increase PHP memory limit, and use a staging environment to test updates before applying to live site.

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