Keeping WordPress Updated (and Fixing the White Screen of Death)

WordPress powers most sites on GrabbyHost, and most WordPress problems trace back to an outdated core, plugin, or theme, or a conflict between them. This guide covers safe update habits and how to recover if an update goes wrong.

Updating WordPress Core

1. Back up your site first – see How to Back Up and Restore Your Website, or use CodeGuard if you have it.
2. Log in to your WordPress admin dashboard and go to Dashboard > Updates.
3. Click Update Now for WordPress core if an update is available. Minor security updates often apply automatically.

Updating Plugins and Themes

1. Go to Plugins > Installed Plugins (or Appearance > Themes) in your WordPress admin dashboard.
2. Update plugins and themes one at a time rather than all at once when possible, especially on a site with many active plugins – this makes it much easier to identify which update caused a problem if something breaks.
3. Remove plugins and themes you're not actually using instead of just deactivating them – unused code is still a security surface even when inactive.

Before a Major Update

If your host or plugin developer flags an update as major (a new WordPress major version, or a plugin's major version bump), test it on a staging copy of your site first if one is available, or at minimum take a fresh backup immediately beforehand so you have a clean rollback point.

Fixing the White Screen of Death

A blank white page with no error message, instead of your site, is almost always a PHP error caused by a plugin or theme conflict, or a PHP version mismatch. To fix it:

1. Access your site's files via File Manager or FTP (see How to Upload Website Files).
2. Rename the wp-content/plugins folder to something like plugins-disabled. This deactivates every plugin at once without needing dashboard access. If the site comes back, the problem is a plugin conflict.
3. Rename the folder back to plugins, then rename plugin subfolders one at a time to find the specific plugin causing the issue.
4. If disabling plugins doesn't fix it, switch to a default WordPress theme by renaming your active theme's folder inside wp-content/themes – WordPress falls back to a default theme automatically.
5. If the site is still blank, check your PHP version (see How to Change Your PHP Version) – some older plugins or themes aren't compatible with newer PHP versions.

Turning On Error Messages Temporarily

To see the actual error instead of a blank page, add these lines to wp-config.php (above the "That's all, stop editing!" comment), then remove them once you're done diagnosing:

define('WP_DEBUG', true);
define('WP_DEBUG_LOG', true);
define('WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', false);

This logs errors to wp-content/debug.log instead of showing them to site visitors, which is safer than displaying errors directly on a live site.

Related Articles

• How to Install WordPress
• Troubleshooting Common Website Errors (500, 403, 404)
• How to Change Your PHP Version
• How to Back Up and Restore Your Website