Website Won't Load – Can't Access Admin Panel

Hello,

This has happened to me before a couple of times after running updates. You could try re-uploading your theme files in their entirety via FTP which may resolve the issue.

Important: Depending on your theme and how it is set up, doing this could over write any custom CSS changes you might have made. I don’t know what theme you’re running so I’ve no idea how it’s set up.

So, to be on the safe side, do a back up before hand so you can reinstate if you need to.

Hi @shelby-yanda
It looks like you have the dreadful WSOD (white screen of death). Please follow the steps below and let us know if you find out what is causing it.

If you cannot access your dashboard, you can deactivate all of your plugins via FTP. FTP is just a name of the thing that lets you manage the files and folders of your website. This is not the WordPress dashboard, this is something that your hosting providers give you. It can just be a simple file manager that lets you edit files, upload new ones and rename folders.

To deactivate all of your plugins via FTP, you just need to rename the “plugins” folder (yes the “plugins” one). Then WordPress will automatically deactivate all of your plugins. You can rename the folder name straight back afterwards.

Your website should then be up and running.

If your website is still not up and running, you can try deactivating your theme. You need to make sure that one of the default WordPress themes, Twenty Fourteen, Twenty Fifteen or Twenty Sixteen is available in the “themes/” folder. Then find your active theme in the “themes/” folder and rename the folder of your active theme, e.g “spun” to “spun-old”. Then rename it straight back afterwards.

Then your site should at least be up and running with one of the default themes.

If still that doesn’t work, you can try replacing the core WordPress files. Pay attention to the bits in bold:

Try downloading WordPress again and delete then replace your copies of everything 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. Some uploaders tend to be unreliable when overwriting files, so don’t forget to delete the original files before replacing them.

Thank you both for your suggestions.

I’ve gone through all of them to the best of my ability with no luck …

I use Dreamweaver to FTP, and I believe it’s still working as well as it normally does but renaming the folders or replacing them didn’t seem to do me any good. (I did try clearing my cache each time and checking the website via https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/)

Is there anything else that might be causing this? I vaguely recall something going wrong with a .php file when I first started using WordPress and causing a similar “white screen” problem, but it’s been some years and I can’t seem to remember which one it was.

Thank you again. Any further insight would be greatly appreciated!