Backend Not Loading Correctly: Blank Pages and Stalled Customizer

You would like to try enabling WordPress debugging after deactivating all the plugins and keeping the default theme active. It should display the errors on screen.

Tried to debug, after deactivting all plugins. It didn’t display any message on the screen.

Excellent, then I recommend re-activating your plugins one-by-one until you find the one causing the problem.

Mr.Huff, I did that already, but nothing happened. No on screen message, no error warning, etc. Just in case, I tried again all the prior steps, but no results at all. Also, I played around with the php versions on the server, but it didn’t resolve the problem.

You said earlier:

after deactivting all plugins. It didn’t display any message on the screen.

Do you mean that deactivating all plugins resolved the issue?

No, deactivating all plugins did not resolve the issue, neither with the default theme nor with a core one. That is what concerns me. I had a similar issue before, but I resolved it by changing the PHP version; this time it didn’t work either.

Ok, try downloading WordPress again, access your server via SFTP or FTP, or a file manager in your hosting account’s control panel (consult your hosting provider’s documentation for specifics on these), and delete then replace your copies of everything on the server except the wp-config.php file and the /wp-content/ directory with fresh copies from the download. This will effectively replace all of your core files without damaging your content and settings.

If you’d like to manually make a backup of your site first, please follow the steps at https://www.ads-software.com/documentation/article/wordpress-backups/

Some uploaders tend to be unreliable when overwriting files, so don’t forget to delete the original files before replacing them.

Same result. Actually, I had a 500 error code on the front end. However, the backend was as before… it showed the menus, but no way to access them further. Always blank or loading. I restored the backup (along with the issue), but at least the webpage is working. I tried to install a plugin, to roll back the theme version, but it was not possible… once activated, it delivered a blank page. I am running out of ideas here.

Ah ok, that’s key info.

Internal server errors (error 500) are often caused by plugin or theme function conflicts, so if resetting your plugins didn’t fix the problem, try switching to the Twenty Twenty-Three theme to rule out a theme-specific problem. If you don’t have access to your Dashboard, access your server via SFTP or FTP, or a file manager in your hosting account’s control panel (consult your hosting provider’s documentation for specifics on these), navigate to /wp-content/themes/ and rename the directory of your currently active theme. This will force the default theme to activate and hopefully rule-out a theme-specific problem.

If that does not resolve the problem, it’s possible that a .htaccess rule could be the source of the problem. To check for this, access your server via SFTP or FTP or a file manager in your hosting account’s control panel, and rename the .htaccess file. If you can’t find a .htaccess file, ensure that you have set your SFTP or FTP client to view invisible files.

If you couldn’t resolve the problem by resetting your plugins and theme or renaming your .htaccess file, we might be able to help, but we’ll need a more detailed error message. Internal server errors are usually described in more detail in the server error log. If you have access to your server error log, generate the error again, note the date and time, then immediately check your server error log for any errors that occurred during that specific time. If you don’t have access to your server error log, ask your hosting provider to look for you.

Nothing worked. However, I did find a recurrent error, starting on Feb 29. It recurs all the way, until yesterday.

Please read the last paragraph of my reply above and follow those steps.

I did. Yesterday I tried to “provoke” the error, but nothing showed up on the log. Today, I accessed the log, and there were two events.

[Tue Mar 05 15:05:29.244397 2024] [autoindex:error] [pid 14893:tid 139906163345292] [client 158.220.125.28:49489] AH01276: Cannot serve directory /home/iguana2011/public_html/groupiepoueps.org/wp-admin/css/: No matching DirectoryIndex (index.html,index.htm,index.php) found, and server-generated directory index forbidden by Options directive, referer: binance.com
[Mon Mar 04 16:32:42.258450 2024] [autoindex:error] [pid 777707:tid 139906668783872] [client 137.184.45.242:64653] AH01276: Cannot serve directory /home/iguana2011/public_html/groupiepoueps.org/wp-admin/css/: No matching DirectoryIndex (index.html,index.htm,index.php) found, and server-generated directory index forbidden by Options directive, referer: binance.com

Those two events are over an hour apparent and therefore cannot be attributed to the error 500.

Is the error consistently reproducable, or seemingly random?

The server error log logs all errors, include those that wouldn’t impact the functionality of the site, so having a server log entry from the exact moment you saw the error 500 on your browser is key to figuring this out.

Unfortunately, that is all the error log shows. That 500 error popped up, when I manually re-install WordPress, via FTP. I am not sure how relevant it is, as when I rolled back to the previous version, it dissapeared.

I think I’ll have to take extreme measures, like delete-install WordPress; and that is terrible, as the page is well ranked and it has a lot of work into it.

Update! Here’s the error log txt file, that has been generated since Mar 05.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wdtWnM2hTu-S79tFdIwyEYPyFeyCAtL7/view?usp=sharing