Wordpress White Screen of Death in Dashboard After Updating to New Version

[Ryuzaki]

I wanted to give a heads up to the people here and any Google searchers frantically searching for a solution to this problem.

I just updated to the new Wordpress version and updated a couple of plugins. Then I went to create a new post with the "Add New Post" screen, which will load the Gutenberg editor. But the page wouldn't load. It just showed a completely white screen with nothing loaded.

You may panic, but don't. First check the front end of your site and make sure it's still loading. If it is then you aren't bleeding money and can relax. Other parts of the dashboard may be working.

I started checking plugins, commenting out custom functions in the functions.php, tried to see if any functions were deprecated and completely killed off. All in the clear.

Of course you could start trying to move the site to the core theme, run the site health check operations, etc. This isn't possible on a high traffic site earning steady cash.

There's some obvious things like making sure you're running a PHP version that's still supported.

But there was a more obvious answer:

The Solution
Before you click the "Add New Post" button or menu item in the admin dashboard, clear your browser's cache for that page. If you don't know how to do it for one page, you can clear your entire cache.

That was it. It loaded perfectly. The problem is Gutenberg is loading a TON of files and this new version of Wordpress changed nearly all of them. You need to make sure you're loading the newest ones and not old ones from your browser cache.

Hope this helps anyone that's freaking out in a panic.

 

[mikey3times]

I just got the white screen on both the front and back end. I guess the update didn't finish properly.

Never fear, I just downloaded Wordpress, uploaded all the files to my server, and pointed the browser at /wp-admin/update.php. It fixed the update and then I clicked to update the database. Boom...everything is back to normal.

Or so I hope.

 

[Ryuzaki]

Server Side Caching & Firewall

Another heads up for this. I just ran into it again on a client site. Of course, I once again checked all the plugins, functions.php, .htaccess, etc.

Clearing my cache didn't work like it did before, then I remembered WPX Hosting uses varnish caching and has all kinds of firewalls set up, which was a double whammy. I've had times where I blocked all IP addresses through .htaccess from accessing a site only to find that cripples most of Wordpress's new "safety check" measures. The reason is is that the site can no longer communicate with its own server somehow. I don't know.

Anyways, I had them clear the cache on their side and they had to whitelist the IP itself in the firewall and that brought up the Gutenberg editor again. What a world.