5.1 turned our site completely “white”

You’ll need to check your error log or enable debugging in WordPress to find out what caused it. A white screen is typical of a PHP Fatal Error, so enabling debugging will help you discover what happened.

https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Debugging_in_WordPress

I had the same issue.

Logged into my dashboard, saw that there was a JetPack update available, so I updated it as I normally do. Then my blog wouldn’t display any pages – whitescreen only.

Fortunately, I’d only updated JetPack. As soon as I disable it, my blog comes back.

From what I’ve read, it’s probably something to do with PHP version (although everything I’ve read says that applies to JetPack 4.8, not the 5.1 that it’s updated to). I know I’m running an old version of PHP, and I’m due to be switching servers in the not-too-distant future – which is when I’ll bring PHP bang up-to-date), but to have an update available with no warning that it could cripple a site running a particular version of PHP was a bit scary.

So, I guess, for the time being I’ll be running my blog with JetPack deactivated.

I have the same issue. I am currently running PHP Version 5.3.28, is there any way to revert back to the old version without loosing site stats and all other settings?

Yep. 14 sites out of 30 on 3 different servers. Not all sites affected. 3 other servers had no sites that errored. Some were Internal Server error and some 503 errors. Suspect something with the PHP versions. Fortunately this time I could log in and deactivate Jetpack and all was well. ??

same here

on multiple sites

Same here

I was able to resolve the issue by having our host upgrade our server from apache 3 / php 5.6 to apache 4 / php 7.

Hi there, thanks for reporting this. Our developers are aware of the issue and are currently investigating it. I’m glad to hear that some of you have been able to workaround this issue by downgrading

Can you please let me know what version of PHP your sites are on?

Could you also please try upgrading to version 7.0 – This is the minimum required PHP version as advised by WordPress: https://www.ads-software.com/about/requirements/ which has appeared to work for the OP.

You link to a page and say that “minimum required PHP version as advised by WordPress” is version 7.0, but that isn’t what the page says. It says the recommended version is version 7, not the required version as you say. You also miss the bit that says “WordPress also works with PHP 5.2.4+”.

I believe I’m running php 5.3.29 which, I appreciate, is outdated but it’s not simply a case of “upgrading to version 7”, as that is likely to affect other sites on the server. Our procedure for upgrading is to migrate sites one-by-one to a secondary server which has everything updated/upgraded, checking for issues, before moving on to the next site. This process is due to begin over the coming weeks and is not something that can be rushed due to a glitch in a Jetpack update.

At present, the only available solution is to disable Jetpack. Thanks for investigating the issue.

Hello,

How to reinstall the previous version, thanks?

re,

I found version 5 I reinstalled it in place of the 5.1 and more worry. ??

version 5.0

• This reply was modified 7 years, 4 months ago by supermagicien.

From WordPress Tavern. March 2017
https://wptavern.com/php-5-6-is-now-the-most-widely-used-php-version
PHP 5.6 usage has steadily increased over the past year and has now overtaken versions 5.3 and 5.4 to be the most widely used version, according to W3Techs’ stats. PHP is used by 82.6% of all the websites for which W3Techs can detect a server-side programming language. PHP 7 accounts for 3.1% of these websites and PHP 5.x makes up 95.3%, with version 5.6 usage at the top end.

So while PHP 7 is likely recommended, I agree with @jsrudderham and am quite sure it is not required since just a few months ago just 3% are using that version.

Interestingly, that article linked to by @sandyjuettner242 also states “…more than half of all WordPress sites (55.6%) are using unsupported versions of PHP (versions 5.2 – 5.5).”

Does that mean more than half of WordPress sites (which are presumably using JetPack) have also run into the “white screen of death” issue? That must be a lot of upset people who are, presumably, all deactivating JetPack as we speak.

Thx @supermagicien for the link.
I reinstalled Jetpack 5 and it works like a charm.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 4 months ago by amigalink.