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WordPress

Posted by Tyler Groskreutz
Tyler Groskreutz
14,793 Points

Theme migration issues with WordPress

When I move my custom built theme from a local server to my BlueHost server, everything seemed to move ok until I try login using www.hedgehogadvertising.com/wp-admin. That URL simply comes up blank. I contacted BlueHost thinking that maybe it was a hosting issue, but they felt it had something to do with the way my theme was built.

Any suggestions where to start to resolve this?

1 Answer

Pol Martin
Pol Martin
8,200 Points
Pol Martin
Pol Martin
8,200 Points

Hi Tyler,

it seems that you are experiencing the infamous 'White Screen of Death'. It's a common issue on Wordpress but it sure can be diagnosed and fixed.

It can be caused by different reasons.

I would first try to enable error displaying and see if it shows some useful info on that scary white screen so you can start with some clue.

Googling for 'wordpress white screen' will be useful as there are lots of resources about this issue.

Maybe this link can help you:

http://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-fix-the-wordpress-white-screen-of-death/

Tyler Groskreutz
Tyler Groskreutz
14,793 Points

So in the article that is attached, it says that a "poorly coded theme" can cause the issue. The theme seems to be the issue in my case. When I activate it, I get the "white screen of death" and when I activate a default theme, the issue goes away.

I'm fairly certain that I followed the methods pretty closely used in course here on treehouse call "how to build a wordpress theme."

Are there things I should be looking for in my theme that could causing this?

Pol Martin
Pol Martin
8,200 Points
Pol Martin
Pol Martin
8,200 Points

Have you tried activating error displaying? As shown in the article I attached, try adding

error_reporting(E_ALL); 
ini_set('display_errors', 1);
define( 'WP_DEBUG', true);

in your wp-config.php file (REMEMBER to remove it after, you don´t want errors to be displayed to the users).

Maybe this prints you some error on the admin login page so we know where the problem is.

Also, check all the URLs in your theme. Seems that with the migration some links are broken (i.e. if you go to http://www.hedgehogadvertising.com the logo in the header won´t display because its url still points to your localhost installation)

Tyler Groskreutz
Tyler Groskreutz
14,793 Points

I got it fixed, but I want to give other users a resource for future reference. I debugged my entire theme with no change. I contacted my hosting service for further help and they found that I was running it on PHP 5.4 and when it was moved to 5.6 the issue was resolved.

Pol Martin
Pol Martin
8,200 Points
Pol Martin
Pol Martin
8,200 Points

Well I'm glad you finally resolved it :)