One of the most frequently reported Joomla problems, is that in one area or another of their website,
we see a Joomla blank page or an empty page with no errors. Just like Windows used to have the Blue screen, we also have the Joomla white screen. This is simply a page which is absolutely blank, and white, no text, no error messages, no partial rendering of the page, just a Joomla blank page.
Finding the Problem:
The trick to figure this one out is to realize this: the blank page Joomla is actually an error page where the error is being suppressed rather than displayed on the screen.
So the first step towards solving the problem is to actually find out what that error is. To get a detailed report of the error, you'll need to try a few things:
1. Find the Server Error log and find the Joomla error
Find the error log on your server cPanel > Error log and check the detailed error log which has been written to it.
2. Set Joomla Error Reporting to Maximum
Change Error reporting in Joomla configuration.php file
You can access the file using FTP or your server cPanel File manager and do the following change in the configuration.php file:
public $error_reporting = 'development';
Or
public $error_reporting = 'maximum';
3. Change Error reporting in Joomla index.php file
If you can't change or don't want to change your configuration.php, you can also enable error reporting via your index.php files. This can either be done in the root folder of Joomla (if the error is in the frontend) or in the index.php file in the /administrator folder, if the error is coming from the backend.
Add the following, ideally at the very beginning of the file, right after the <?php declaration
ini_set('display_errors',true);
error_reporting( E_ALL );
4. Set full PHP Error Reporting
Besides Joomla errors coming from the blank screen, you can enable full PHP Error reporting to see what the error is. You can change the following two settings in your php.ini file to enable full error reporting
- Set Display error to On to show PHP errors:
display_errors = On
- Set error reporting to the following for all errors to shoe except notices:
error_reporting = E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE & ~E_STRICT
Finding and fixing the Joomla white screen error
Once you've done one or more of the following change in your setup, you should be getting a more detailed error instead of a Joomla white screen of death. This is of course should be able to guide you to what the problem is and how you can start to fix it.
Many times for the error itself, you'll be able to understand which Joomla extension is actually causing the problem, and then you can act accordingly to fix the problem.
Go to the /components/ folder and rename or change the name of the extension folder. For example, change /com_sh404SEF/ to /com_sh404SEF_temp/.
You might also need to rename the directory name within the /administrator/components/ directory as well.
Fixing a problem with an extension
You can either disable the plugin which is causing the issue.
If the problem is being caused by an extension and you want to quickly get your site up and running, you should be able to temporarily fix the problem by renaming the folder of the extension via your hosting server’s cPanel File Manager or via FTP.
Fixing a problem with Joomla files
If the problem is not coming from an extension, and you have not done any recent changes to files, a Joomla core file might have gotten corrupted and is causing the error. The easiest way to fix this is to re-upload all the Joomla core files so that any problems are fixed with the new set of files. This is done as per a usual download of Joomla files from Joomla.org and overwriting the files using FTP or your hosting cPanel File Manager, whichever you prefer.
Still see a Joomla blank screen
One of these reasons is that there might be an empty index.html file in the directory which you are trying to access, possibly in the root directory. Typically, an empty index.html file is used to protect the contacts of a directory from being accessed manually. This is because by default, the index.html file is displayed and since the file is actually empty, the user would just get a Joomla blank screen. So to solve your problem, check whether there is an empty index.html file in the folder which is being accessed, and temporarily rename it.
Note: Many folders are going to have an index.html. If this solution does not work, don't forget to revert the index.html
Main Reason why a Joomla fatal error is thrown
Out of memory error - the most likely issue on most sites is that your Joomla has run out of memory. This usually happens when you are on shared hosting, and your host is limiting the amount of memory that it can use. In this case, you have to increase the memory limit.
Still got a Joomla white screen?
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