The “white screen of death” is WordPress failing so hard it can’t even show you an error. Blank page, no message, nothing to Google. Here’s the exact order we check things in.
1. Confirm it’s actually down for everyone
Open the site in an incognito window or check it on your phone using mobile data. Sometimes it’s a caching issue on your machine, not the site.
2. Turn on debugging
Edit wp-config.php and change WP_DEBUG to true. Reload the site. Nine times out of ten a real error message appears, naming the file that crashed — which tells you exactly which plugin or theme to disable.
3. Deactivate all plugins
Rename wp-content/plugins to plugins-off via your host’s file manager. Site back? Reactivate plugins one at a time until it breaks again.
4. Switch themes
Rename your theme folder so WordPress falls back to a default theme. If that fixes it, the theme is the problem — usually a bad update or an edited file.
5. Check the memory limit
Add define( 'WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '256M' ); to wp-config.php. Underpowered shared hosting plus a heavy page builder is a classic white-screen combination.
6. Ask your host about server errors
If none of the above works, the problem may be at server level — a PHP version change, a corrupted file, or a full disk. Your host can check the server error log in minutes.
Prevention beats panic
Every step above is easier when you have a backup from yesterday and a record of what changed. That’s the whole argument for maintenance: the white screen stops being an emergency and becomes a five-minute restore.