White screen of death

[Belinda]

I was in the process of customising the Search widget using code I found online and I got the white screen of death (didn't know at the time that is what it's called.. 🙂 ) however I called my hosting provider and they stepped me through and I had to FTP into my site and rename both the plugins & theme folder. It wasn't until I renamed the theme folder that my site came back online.

I'm using the Genesis theme and now I'm wondering what do i do? Can i save my old theme files so I can have to do all those customisations again or is there an incompatibility somewhere or do I now have to start from scratch??

I'm new to WordPress so to have gotten even the small distance I've managed so far has taken a large effort.

Help please!!

[DTHkelly]

Perhaps submit a help ticket to Studio Press also.

In the meantime, were you using a childtheme? The Genesis sample childtheme?

Make sure your site is using a default theme (twenty fourteen, twentytwelve).

Using FTP - download [on you computer or (better) an external hard drive] the renamed theme folder. You can use free Notepad++ to open the files offline. http://notepad-plus-plus.org/

Once saved offline, you can re-incorporate the customizations into your refreshed site!

This is my (non-professional) approach: using FTP, delete the renamed Genesis theme files (currently in your wp-content/themes).

And you can start over. Upload the Genesis framework. And upload you non-customized childtheme.

[McGuive7]

I second Kellylise's message. Definitely switch over to a local code editor (I recommend Sublime Text 2) and use FTP. Making edits from the admin is a surefire way to end up in the situation you found yourself in.

Once you make the switch over to FTP, I recommend changing the WP_DEBUG definition in wp-config.php from FALSE to TRUE. More instructions/info here: http://codex.wordpress.org/WP_DEBUG

Once you do this, it ensure that (for the most part) if you ever do get the WSOD you'll also see the PHP errors that are causing it, which is pretty indispensable when debugging.

So to answer your final question, if you do take these two steps, you can still use your final code that was generating the erros/WSOD. With WP_DEBUG set to TRUE, you'll be able to see exactly what part of your code is causing the issue, and fix things accordingly.

[DTHkelly]

Belinda:
Definitely debug - http://www.studiopress.community/topic/white-screen-of-death-2/#post-115918

Also, take a look at this plugin: https://wordpress.org/plugins/code-snippets/

Code Snippets is an easy, clean and simple way to add code snippets to your site. No need to edit to your theme's functions.php file again!

You can export your snippets before activating any. And by activating each php snippet one at a time, you'll know which one caused WSOD.

[Belinda]

Thank you everyone for your feedback. I'm happy to say my site is back online and back in the state it was before I got the WSOD.

I submitted a help ticket with Studio Press and they requested a copy of the functions and styles files which I sent and were able to advise which part of the code triggered the problem. I was then able to FTP into the site and upload amended file and then rename the directories back and apply the theme again and voila my site is back. I found the support very efficient which was great.

I have now gone and enabled the wp-debug option and have downloaded the code snippets plugin.

Although it was a bit stressful at the time I've learnt a few things now so that is the positive. So now I can continue trying to customise my site to the way I want it so I can try to launch it in the next month or so. 🙂

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