Getting the dreaded blank page after upgrade

if you are upgrading then you keep wp-config.php

Internal server errors (error 500) are often caused by plugin or theme function conflicts, so if you have access to your admin panel, try deactivating all plugins. If you don’t have access to your admin panel, try manually resetting your plugins, using ftp rename plugins folder to plugins_hold and create a blank plugins folder If that resolves the issue,and you can log in delete the blank plugins folder you created and rename plugins_hold back to plugins reactivate each one individually until you find the cause.

If that does not resolve the issue, try switching Twenty Ten theme (WordPress 3.0 and higher) to rule-out a theme-specific issue. If you don’t have access to your admin panel, access your server via FTP or SFTP, navigate to /wp-content/themes/ and rename the directory of your currently active theme. This will force the Default theme Twenty Ten theme (WordPress 3.0 and higher) to activate and hopefully rule-out a theme-specific issue.

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

If you weren’t able to resolve the issue by either resetting your plugins and theme or renaming your .htaccess file, we may 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 time period. If you don’t have access to your server error log, ask your hosting provider to look for you.

Govpatel,

Thank you so much for your detailed response. I have had the opportunity to access you website and view the video for manually installing wordpress. I found it very informative however I still am struggling with my upgrade. Perhaps I should provide a bit more detail. I am a novice, just learning wordpress and have been asked by a client to upgrade their blog. It is a custom installation whereas only the blog is on a wordpress platform. I have successfully backed-up the files, the database and deactivated all the plugins. I have been successfully re-storing the blog to its 2.85 version but can’t seem to get the upgrade to work. I’m not even sure I’m installing the files in the right directory. You videos mention a public_html folder, however I don’t seem to have that folder. The blog I believe uses the default theme -plain blue background. Appreciate any help you can offer.

When you log in admin of wordpress does it give a option to update to latest version

If you do not have public_html then do you know what server you using as some have httpdocs as root

you are using an older version of the wordpress try downloading the current stable version 3.1.1 unzip it on your local hard drive and upload the contents of the wordpress folder, which would include wp-content, wp-includes, wp-admin folders all of the contents of the folder in which you found these folders to the blog directory on your server, via FTP client i recommend FileZilla https://filezilla-project.org/ upload the files and then go to the domain name of the blog from what you are telling it seems like a sub directory install, GovPatel is telling more advanced steps you shoul provid more info like say wordpress is installed in example.com/blog navigate to the blog folder in the root directory

If you upgrading manually then do not repeat do not overwrite wp-content folder as that is where all your plugins and themes and uploads are and wp-config.php as that where your database info is.

I have video on my website that will show you how to upgrade manually

@govpatel a manual overwrite wouldn’t overwrite the themes and plugins content and also since the wordpress archive is virgin, directly downloaded from the https://www.ads-software.com/latest.zip that wouldn’t incude a wp-config.php file!

Thank You learned some thing new

Thank you both for your advice. I have downloaded version 3.1.1. Unzipped the files and uploaded through filezilla to what I thought was the correct subdirectory. However there are two places that I see wordpress installed.

example.com/webroot/blog

example.com/webroot/blogname

If you want specific information I’ll be happy to provide it, just not sure how much info I should share here.

both these directorie’s url resolve to a wordpress blog?
then both are wordpress installations two different wordpress installations!
what you need to do is upload the contents of latest wordpress version to these directories
the wordpress archive takes about 3.0MB space zipped, unzip it and upload the contents of the wordpress folder directly to these two installations separately
then try opening the url’s in a browser window