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Clicking a Google search result takes me to a blank page

One of our clients' sites does not resolve if you get there via Google.

  1. Do a Google search for "ASSR"
  2. The top result should be "American Society of Spine Radiology". Click on that.
  3. The page is blank
  4. Now refresh that blank page. The site appears.

I have never seen anything like that happen before. Anyone know what could cause that?

Solution

  • Most likely
    It's called Wordpress Blank Screen of Death

    Using a content management system like WordPress there may be times bad things can happen. If you’ve upgraded recently one thing that has been happening to various projects that I work on is the “blank screen of death” as it’s known by WordPress website owners and developers.

    The white page of death the white page is simply all you’ll see is blank page do not panic, but relax all is not lost as it may be some problem in core files that is causing the error as your content is saved in database nothing is lost make a backup of database if you have not backed up.

    So if you are currently faced with this problem like I said, remain calm and don’t do anything like deleting your database. Here are a few places where the problem may exist…

    WordPress Theme

    Normally when you upgrade you need to switch to a working default twenty ten theme if you did not switch then may be the theme you are using is not compatible so using ftp program rename the theme you are using so that twenty ten theme opens and see if that solved your problem.

    Plugins

    If you did not deactivate the plugins before you upgraded may be one of the plugins is causing the problem as may be is not compatible or needs to be updated to the new version so using ftp program rename the plugins folder to say plugins_hold and create a blank plugins folder and try to log in if you can log in then you will notice that all plugins are deactivated. Go back in ftp program and delete blank plugins folder and rename the orignal back to plugins and activate one plugin at time to see which plugin is causing the problem.

    .htaccess

    It is possible that a .htaccess rule could be the source of the problem. To check for this, access your server via FTP or SFTP and rename the .htaccess file. If you can’t find a .htaccess file, make sure that you have set your FTP or SFTP client to view invisible files.

    If the above steps did not solve the problem then could be that your upgrade was not not performed properly and your files may be corrupted.

    WordPress Site Files

    If you want to check what files are causing the problem then you can

    First check wp-config.php if you have any blank space before

    <?php

    code if there is none then try and add this code in next line

    error_reporting(E_ALL); ini_set('display_errors', 1);

    In addition, add the following code above

    /* That's all, stop editing! Happy blogging */

define( 'WP_DEBUG', true);

    See what error you get.

    and replace the files that are giving error from fresh WordPress download.

    Once you have site working delete the line you added in line 2 and change true back to false.

    Source: http://gbpcentral.com/blog/fixing-blank-screen-death-wordpress/