You ever surf to your site or refresh after a change and discovered the WordPress White Screen of Death?

Well,  you're not alone.

There are three common reasons why you are getting this white screen of death:

1. Your server is down. This can happen to the best of us. This is your web host's responsibility and if you are not that worried about it, I'd recommend waiting 5-15 minutes and trying again. If this does not work, try displaying errors as shown here, then call your web host to alert them of the problem.

2. You are making edits to your theme file and you've created invalid php. HTML/CSS seem to be much more forgiving, whereas a single character of incorrect php seems to crash the whole site. If this is the case, and you still have the file you are editing open, just undo your previous actions until the site comes up again. This is a good time to mention ALWAYS back up!  You should consider refreshing your web page every time you make a change, to make sure your php validates. If you've already closed your file, display php errors as shown here, to try and figure out which file is corrupt. Try to restore.

3. If the white screen of death appears on a new install of a WordPress theme or plugin, immediately deactivate said theme or plugin. If the white screen of death extends to your dashboard, and you cannot login, you'll have to attack the problem through the database. Try displaying php errors as shown here to verifiy it is said theme/plugin.

To change it in your database you will need:

1. Your WordPress database name
2. your username and login to your webhosting control panel.

Login to your control panel, find  your database, go into DB Web Admin (phpMyAdmin),  select wp_options table ('tableprefix_options'), from the top options choose "browse".

Disabling a theme

Find both the 'template' and 'stylesheet' tables and edit them with the name of desired theme ('default' if you aren't sure).

Disabling a plugin

Find the table titled "active_plugins", click edit, remove (recommend cutting and pasting) the string containing the plugin name ie:

i:0;s:54:"all-in-one-video-pack/all_in_one_video_pack_widget.php";

You can deactivate them all by cutting the whole string and pasting it somewhere else. Click save.

Voila!