Themes "breaking", WSOD inconsistently

  • I am setting up a new WordPress installation at https://www.digitalhill.com/blog/. Ever since I began, the site will sometimes go blank (white screen of death), the theme admin area will say the theme is broken, and the dashboard will say “The themes directory is either empty or doesn’t exist. Please check your installation.”

    I am working on a custom theme which is modified from TwentyTwelve. I’ve been going to the theme manager and reactivating my theme when it breaks. When I was developing the theme, it would break frequently after making updates. Now it doesn’t break as often, but only occasionally (making it that much harder to troubleshoot). It seems to be more common for it to break after it’s been a while since the last time I’ve reloaded the site, such as the first time I check it in the morning.

    I have tried completely reinstalling including the database tables but I still have the same problem. I am using a couple of pluging (Disqus, AA’s Digg Digg Alternative), but I still have the problem even when they are disabled.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

  • Did you edit/customize the theme directly or did you create a child theme for your modifications?

    Thread Starter Doug

    (@spheric1)

    I edited it directly. To be clear, I left the TwentyEleven and TwentyTwelve themes untouched and in place; I copied to a new directory in the themes folder to create the custom theme.

    Revert to Twenty Twelve theme (unedited) with all plugins deactivated and see if the problem persists.

    Thread Starter Doug

    (@spheric1)

    Yes, it broke again this morning. Twenty Twelve was active. When I went to the themes manager it said “The active theme is broken. Reverting to the default theme.” It switched to the default theme. When I checked again, it had reverted back to Twenty Twelve theme.

    Do you have a recent backup of your site? If so, delete all files of WordPress, reinstall WordPress and restore your site from backup.

    You may like to contact your host for support as the problem can be with your server. Your error logs will tell you more about what is really happening – your host will be able to help you with this.

    Thread Starter Doug

    (@spheric1)

    I’ve figured out that, after some period of time, for some reason WordPress switches the theme/template to the word “default”. Since there is no “default” directory in the templates folder, it throws errors. I don’t know where or why this happens since the default theme, should there be problems, is twentytwelve.

    As a workaround for the moment, I’ve created a small plugin which checks to see if the template returned by the get_template() function is equal to “default”. If so, it switches the theme back to my custom theme.

    I had previously reinstalled WordPress and seemed to experience this problem without plugins, database changes, and with the default theme. I wonder if it is a PHP issue; I see now that PHP 5.2.4 is required for WordPress 3.2, while the server is running PHP 5.2.17.

    Can be a php issue.
    https://www.ads-software.com/about/requirements/

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
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