The WordPress’ White Screen of Death
A screen of nothingness..
I was trying to upgrade this blog to WordPress 2.8 Beta 1 earlier. Everything went well until the step of upgrading the database was completed: the famous WordPress’ white screen of death. It happened when I tried to enter the WordPress’ administration area.
If you are here because you get a white screen (blank screen) after a WordPress upgrade, here are some useful tips to get you out of trouble.
If everything was fine before you upgraded, then there is a higher chance of an active plug-in being incompatible with the new WordPress version. If you only have a few plug-ins, then you are lucky. You can simply download all of your plug-ins from your WordPress plug-in files (usually under wp-content/plug-ins) and then delete them from your WordPress’ server folder. This will deactivate all active plug-ins on your WordPress blog.
If you have lots of plug-ins like I do, then you need to do harder steps to deactivate all active WordPress plug-ins in one go.
How to deactivate all WordPress plug-ins when white screen appears
- Go to your hosting control panel and access PHPMyAdmin to view & edit your database manually.
- Go to your WordPress database.
- Run this SQL query to grab the setting of the active plug-ins:
SELECT * FROM wp_options WHERE option_name = ‘active_plugins’;
It will return an entry on the table wp_options containing the current active plug-ins.
- Edit it (clicking on the pencil icon), then open your Notepad/Wordpad , and make a backup of the values on the option_value column.
- After you have a backup of the values, delete the values (NOT the table entry). Simply highlight the content of the option_value and press the DELETE button on your keyboard. Then save it. This will quickly deactivate your plug-ins completely.
Now, try to access your WordPress administration again. Everything should be alright now 
If not, try re-uploading all the files again as there might be a possibility of incomplete files being uploaded.
I was having a problem earlier with this Google Analytics plug-in:
Plugin Name: Google Analytics
Plugin URI: http://www.semiologic.com/software/marketing/google-analytics/
Description: Adds <a href=”http://analytics.google.com”>Google analytics</a> to your blog, with all sorts of advanced tracking toys enabled.
Author: Denis de Bernardy
Version: 2.4
Author URI: http://www.semiologic.com
The plug-in appears to be incompatible with WordPress 2.8 Beta 1. So if you’ve got a blank screen, check whether you are using this plug-in on your blog first before everything else. A user also reports that the WordPress Related Posts plug-in is also not compatible with WordPress 2.8 Beta 1.
Any horror stories when upgrading your WordPress?
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Thanks for the heads up on this Michael. I know I’ll upgrade when the real deal comes out, but it’s nice to know ahead of time what plugins won’t work with the new version. Hopefully the plugin authors will have ironed out the kinks with these two very popular plugins before the release to the public.
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Well there should be a few more betas before the final version so I’m pretty sure the plug-in developers will be ready for it
I recently upgraded to the beta version and I experienced no problems. I do however not use either of the mentioned plugins. Before any WordPress upgrade a database backup should be made and all plugins de-activated. WordPress actually recommends these two steps. I know that doing things this way could be time consuming, but we all know the old story of rather safe than sorry.
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I know
sometimes I backed it up and sometimes I don’t.. just can’t be bothered anymore. But maybe that’s because I never experience a massive failure during an upgrade. Better be safe than sorry, like you said, I guess
Thanks. Recently when i go to manage plugins, it shows white screen.
The problem still exists. WIll check that query and disable and start enabling the plugins one by one and see which plugin is the culprit.
Thank you very much.
Probably to avoid such situation for myself..I always wait WP to come out of beta..
Because soon most of the plugin will get an update and then we can upgrade to WP without any issue
I found that the only one I used that was a problem was “Stray Quotes”
http://www.italyisfalling.com/stray-random-quotes/
P.S. If you’re looking for a replacement for the Google Analytics plugin; I use Google Analyticator, which doesn’t cause problems for 2.8
http://plugins.spiralwebconsulting.com/analyticator.html
Yup, I’m using that plug-in at the moment on my blog. Works like a charm.