My WordPress site went down overnight and I can't find the backup
I woke up this morning and my WordPress site is showing a blank white screen. I tried logging into wp-admin but nothing works. I have some really important blog posts that I haven't backed up in weeks. I'm panicking because I have a client who pays me to keep the site running. What should I do right now?
1 Answer(s)
First, don't panic. A white screen of death (WSOD) is usually caused by a plugin conflict, a theme issue, or a PHP memory limit problem. Here's what to do step by step.
1. Enable debugging: Access your site via FTP or your hosting file manager. Open wp-config.php and add these lines right before "/* That's all, stop editing! */": define('WP_DEBUG', true); define('WP_DEBUG_LOG', true);
2. Rename your plugins folder to "plugins_old" via FTP. This disables all plugins. Try loading your site. If it works, reactivate plugins one by one until you find the culprit.
3. If that doesn't work, switch to a default theme by renaming your current theme folder.
4. Check your PHP memory limit in wp-config.php by adding: define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '256M');
Going forward, install UpdraftPlus and set up daily automatic backups to Google Drive or Dropbox. This way you'll never be in this situation again.