Sometimes updates break stuff and stop your website from displaying, there’s no errors messages or any indication of might have gone wrong, because by default the system error messages is disabled and even if you enable it, there could be other features preventing it from being displayed. So here’s a few steps to make it visible and increase your chance of finding out what’s causing your website to be “offline”/blank/not loading.
- Make sure the error display is enabled, this is done via PHP Engine. Either you have access to a php.ini in your website folder or the hosting panel has an option to modify PHP settings. In there you’ll find the error_display option and also error_reporting. The way they should be set in order to make the errors visible is:
error_display = TrueorYesdepending on the hosting platformerror_reporting = E_ALL
There are other options available for error_reporting but this one will make sure every piece of information is displayed.
- After this adjustments, you could try refreshing the page and see if anything comes up, if not, head to your website root folder (files folder) and in there locate the wp-config.php which contains configuration settings for the Wordpress. The following parameters should be as followed:
define( 'WP_CACHE', false ); define( 'WP_DEBUG', true );
This makes it so that no caching takes place when requesting the website while it’s not working properly and enables the WordPress debugging. You would want to turn this back to the previous settings once the website is up and running.
Once you refresh the website it should start displaying the errors thatare causing your website not to load.
Common issues
Plugin error, either because the update failed or it’s not been updated by the developer to the current WordPress or PHP Version. This is usually repaired by reinstalling the plugin or replacing it with an alternative.
Running out of memory, this usually happens when the website is either overloaded with scripts/plugins or not optimized for the hosting and happens on most ocassions in shared hosting plans. Can be fixed by optimizating the installation or by switching to plan that supports the resources your website require.
Unable to open file, this usually happens when a Wordpress installation doesn’t complete an update, when a plugin or a theme doesn’t complete the update/installation. It can be fixed by reinstalling the required part, usually during this error it displays the path of the file it tried to open, if the is inside the wp-content/plugins folder is related to the plugins, if it’s inside wp-content/themes if related to the installed theme. If it’s outside the wp-content it will be the Wordpress core files.