Theme Update – Blank Pages

Hello,

So I just updated my theme, via FTP method. Then after, I updated wordpress. Now all there is is a blank page whenever I go to my website – just a white screen.

I had to revert to my back-up, now back to square one.

Thanks,
Carly

Okay, so I realize that every time I go to deactivate the WPbakery plugin, my website just goes to all blank pages, so there is something wrong with that plugin. How do I manually delete ALL of the WPBakery files in Filezilla, so that I can erase this plugin from WP admin area, and then just re-install it?

You can delete the js-composer folder in your wp-content/plugins/ folder via filezilla using the delete command ….
however, I run into this issue where it may “time out” and not finish…
this is a normal server issue with trying to delete too many files via ftp …

If you have a “filemanager” module in your web hosting account panel, it’s MUCH faster to navigate into your public docs folder (e.g., httpdocs or whatever), then go to that folder and check box, and click delete. Server can do it in one click.

FTP, you might have to open the stupid js-composer folder, select all, then click delete and might have to do that twice until folder empty.

Just went through that on 7 websites. The filemanager method MUCH quicker.

Hey Chris,

I tried deleting via FTP, and still just brings me to blank pages (it doesn’t time out, even after clicking delete, the first couple seconds of me going to my website, its just all blank pages, won’t load).

Not sure what to do, as I need to modify the home page, and I am not able to because visual composer doesn’t work… :\

Well, VC does work
— obviously if you delete the old folder, you need to upload a new fresh copy — assuming you did that ?

Start up without ANY other plugins running; turn off all caching.

Make sure your server is setup for php to have at least 256MB RAM allocated to it.

Clear the cache in your web browser.

Typically best to update WP, before updating theme, in future… just a thought. Seems to work better than way.

If above doesn’t work, perhaps try:

First clear/disable any server caching, turn off mod_pagespeed if using it.

a) switch to default theme
b) deactivate visual composer
c) deactivate all plugins
d) switch on visual composer
d) under appearance > preview theme for newsmag — if it won’t ‘preview’ at all; then you need to do CLEAN install of the theme, td plugins, and visual composer
e) once you can ‘preview’ the theme, then you can activate it and it will work.
f) then turn on plugins and if it dies, disable the bad plugin

Went through this issue last week, actually.

Hey Chris,

I didn’t add in the new JS_composer…that is likely the issue. I will try that, and then if that doesn’t work, I will try what you suggest.

I have WPengine – a couple questions:
1) There are 4 areas in Filezilla that contain the js and js composer. First wp-admin contains a folder labelled “js”, then wp-includes contains a folder labelled “js”, then under wp-content > plugins contains a folder called “js_composer” and then under wp-content > Themes > Newspaper contains a folder called “js” —> do I need to delete all four? Or do I just delete the folder called “js_composer” from the plugins, and then add in the new folder there?
2) How do I start up without any plugins, if once I delete and re-add the visual composer, none of my pages work? Should I disable all plugins, and THEN delete the visual composer?
3) Turn off all caching? I have WPengine as my hosting company, and I think they deal with the caching, no? I do not have any caching plugins – how do you shut off your caching?
4) Again, I think I would have to talk to WPengine about the RAM, yes?

Sorry for all of these questions, I really appreciate your help. My site is pretty active, and so I get pretty stressed when the site doesn’t work because it affects traffic flow majorly.

Thank you.

Thanks so much Lucian! I appreciate the help. I got my site fixed, but would you still recommend that I change my server so that it is setup for php to have at least 256MB RAM allocated to it?

Hi, sorry to poke my nose in, only because I’ve been adjusting this stuff across our news network sites this month to “dial in” the best setting for the baby sites vs the big ones. Oddly when setting the memory in php.ini to 512MB, WordPress was saying “you only have 40MB allocated” … which made no sense.

Stupidly, and there should be no real reason to do this, I went ahead and added the pokey line to top of wp-config.php after the first commented stuff,

define( 'WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '256M' );
define( 'WP_POST_REVISIONS', 3 );
define( 'AUTOSAVE_INTERVAL', 160 );

and shazam, now WP says “I have 256MB” — even though the WP codex specifically says if you set the memory in php if would use more memory if needed (e.g., if I go to my php settings in my hosting panel it *says* 256MB, and the server DEFAULT was set to 256MB per site … WP was still saying 40MB which is the WordPres BUILT-IN default).

So, for purposes of paranoia, I *do* recommend you add the 256M line to your wp-config.php *and* set the level in your php settings…

this will
a) on server allow 256MB to be used for php
b) editing config file for WP, tells WP, you have more memory to actually play with since it apparently cannot figure this out … (!)

ALSO … you don’t need to use them, but I also include the limit drafts item in my example above, since that also seems to work better at “top” of wp-config.php file than at bottom.

Food for thought anyway 🙂

Hey Chris,

Thank you for that – I will add that to the top of the wp-config.php file, so that it syncs up with the changes over in my hosting php files. It is annoying that we need to manually do this, but such is the crazy world of the interwebs. :s