Blank Screen After WordPress Upgrade: How I Fixed It
Recently I was tasked with updating a clients WordPress blog. Normally this is an easy thing to do right? Normally. For some reason, after upgrading a clients WordPress blog, I got the blank screen issue. Here’s how I fixed it.
To start out, here’s how I arrived at this situation. I basically did all the normal stuff, like backing up the database and site files. I deactivated plugins, double checked everything and uploaded the new files for WordPress 2.8.2. I was upgrading a site that was running WordPress 2.5.
After uploading everything and checking the new config file for accuracy, I ran the update script at /wp-admin/update.php. After running this, I got the screen that says “WordPress has been udpated” or whatever it says specifically. So, I tried to go to /wp-admin and login. Blank screen. I tried to go to the site home page. Blank screen.
Nuts.
So, at this point, I’m basically thinking to myself “what next?”
It was a good thing I decided to perform this upgrade at about 3am on a Sunday morning. There was a slim chance I was going to disrupt any important web site traffic at this time. I had lucked out with my timing in that I didn’t need to panic too bad here from the site being down.
After dinking around with re-uploading a few key files, and double checking the configuration, I still had found no solution. Then, I decided to try to completely remove the plugins from the situation. I had deactivated them, but I’ve had weird problems with plugins before during upgrades.
What was the one thing I could do to get the plugins out of the equation without being able to log into the WordPress admin? Remove the plugins folder. In the past this worked to fix a blog that hadn’t had the plugins deactivated before an upgrade. I didn’t think it would work in this situation, since all plugins had been deactivated, but I decided to give it a try.
I renamed the plugins folder to plugins_backup, and created a new blank plugins folder. Bam! The site was back up. Interesting.
Now I just need to go through the plugins and add them back one by one and see what the problem is.
Patience is key sometimes. Too bad it’s 4am though.
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