WordPress White Screen of Death

We have all heard of the Windows “blue screen of death”, but when it comes to webmasters and marketers the most feared problem is the WordPress White Screen of Death. This happens usually after you upgrade a plugin or make a change within the WordPress design manager and all of a sudden your screen goes white! Another symptom is if FireFox asks you to either open the php file or save it to disk rather than just let you work on the damn file!

Why Does WordPress Have White Screens Or Ask You To Open Or Save a PHP File

This isn’t a WordPress problem, but really a MySQL - PHP function or rather failure. When a PHP page is loading or trying to load and either an error occurs or a script can’t load, it just dies rather than blowing out bad code. Within the backend of WordPress this causes the WordPress White Screen of Death.

Even though your website will still be displaying content to visitors, you have no access to the backend which is about as bad as it gets next to your site being down. Most of my themes rely on a plugin called Limit Posts and if that isn’t activated, my sites look down right wrong and incomplete. So what do you do when this happens?

Well the first thing is to ascertain where the problem is. If you just installed a plugin and all of a sudden your system is no longer working then it is pretty easy to figure out that the problem is the plugin you just installed! When you are upgrading either your entire WordPress system or a single plugin, the game plan is the same. Always activate our plugins ONE AT A TIME. If you are using the automatic plugin updater, deactivate the plugin prior to updating it.

I can’t stress enough how important it is to follow those rules. Again:

1. Deactivate the plugin that you are upgrading first - if you use the WordPress auto-upgrader, deactivate the plugin before updating.
2. Activate plugins one at a time - after you activate a plugin after a WordPress upgrade, go to settings or mange and hit a couple of links to make sure that your system hasn’t crashed. The problem is  if you log out and log back in after a plugin upgrade, you might get the WordPress white screen of death and not be able to see your backend. If that happens, you will have to remove the plugin from your plugin directory. Another reason to activate your plugins one at a time is so you know which plugin is causing the problem. You can delete it from your plugin directory then you can log back in and see your backend.

I know I am repeating myself here, but I can’t stress enough how important it is to follow those rules. I manage over 17 systems for myself and my clients and  have a lot of experience with screwing up, so trust me when I tell you these things, I have messed up every aspect of WordPress at one time or another! Fortunately I am able to learn from my mistakes and pass that on to all of you.

WordPress Problems That Involve Widgets Or Theme Editor Design Changes

Other than plugins, the next most common issues involve failures with WordPress after you change a file within the Theme Editor, or you have added or changed a widget within the sidebar. If you change something and the screen goes white or you try to access a file and it offers to save it to disk or open it with your default program, you have a php issue.

The question is which PHP function has failed? There are a few methods to check errors and most of them are technical. If you are on a shared hosting like GoDaddy you have to look in the log with c-panel or on other hosting solutions that use plesk you have to view the apache logs. If you have access to the server at a root level they are by default in the /var/logs/. If you set up sites within your home folder, then they might be anywhere. The best thing is to contact tech support at your hosting company and ask where the apache logs are for your site.

When you get the latest log after an error it will look like a bunch of code like this:

PHP Fatal error:  Call to undefined function
force_mod… in /home/mstankard/web/getfoundnow_com/wp-settings.php on
line 160 referer: http://www.getfoundnow.com/internetmarketing/wp-admin/comment.php?action=approve; etc.

Yours will look a lot different since I had to change a couple of things for security, but this shows the problem was in a comment approval that went bad. I was able to remove the recent comments plugin and everything worked fine. The trick is to identify where the issue is and act upon it.

Another problem I had was with a video display plugin which I was able to troubleshoot with FireFox by viewing source of the error page:

 I loaded up the following URL after logging in to my blog’s management console:

http://www.getfoundnow.com/internetmarketing/wp-admin/options-general.php?page=flv-embed.php

There was a section in the page where the player was supposed to be loaded, but it was not appearing. I turned on the error console feature in Firefox to view the Javascript errors and found the following:

SWFObject is not defined
http://www.getfoundnow.com/internetmarketing/wp-admin/options-general.php?page=flv-embed.php

I used the “View Source” function in Firefox to view the source of the plugin management page and found the link to the swfobject.js file. It was pointing to the following URL:

http://www.getfoundnow.com/internetmarketing/wp-content/plugins/flv-embed/swfobject.js

This showed it was looking for code in a different place than before since I removed a plugin that white-screened me, but was able to recreate the directory and copy the file in and it worked.

I am going to continue to update this post

If you are having WordPress 2.6 Upgrade Login Problems go there and read that post.

If you like killer WordPress themes you could go to that link as well!

 

 

 

 

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WordPress 2.6 Upgrade Login Problems

If you are planning to upgrade your WordPress system to 2.6, there are a few things that you need to prepare. There is a weird thing that happens after you upgrade: you can’t log in or reset your password. I had a freaking heart attack after upgrading and all of a sudden I couldn’t log back in!

Fortunately, there was already support info on WordPress’ blog. You have to clear out your cookies to log back in. So, what can you do to prepare for the install without getting freaked out or dealing with problems installing multiple systems as I have to do?

First of all, it’s easier to use Firefox to do all this since it has an easy way to clear your cookies, just hit control, shift and delete at the same time and a box will pop up. Make sure the “cookies” box and “authenticated sessions” box is checked and hit “Clear Private Data. You can also reach this in FireFox by going to tools > Clear Private Data.

So the process to upgrade is basically the same as always except that after you do the upgrade, and are asked to log back in, clear your cookies, THEN try to log in. On 3 installs I had to have the password reset, but I didn’t have to on 2 others so I can’t explain the difference. The key is to be prepared for any bad things that could happen.

WordPress 2.6 Upgrade Checklist To Fix Login Failure Problems

Just know that if you are getting ready to upgrade to WordPress 2.6 have the following stuff ready:

• Backup your database! - this is more important than ever since there are a lot of reported bugs with version 2.6.
• Make sure you have your user information - Have the logins, emails and passwords for all administrator accounts. I don’t use the admin account to post articles so all my blogs have at least 2 administrator accounts. You might want to upgrade an account to administrator while doing the upgrade.
• Make sure your WordPress system is sending emails - you will be screwed if your WordPress system can’t send you the password if you need to reset it. Test that your system is sending emails and that you know and have access to the administrator accounts.
• Upgrade WordPress - go ahead and deactivate your plugins and run the upgrade script.
• Clear your cookies! you can use the Ctrl - Shift - Delete keys on your keyboard to launch the cookie clearer in Firefox, or go to Tools - Clear Private Data in Firefox or go to Tools - Delete Browsing History if you must use Internet Explorer.
• Log into your WordPress system as an administrator - once your cookies are cleared you can try to log in as an admin ad start activating your plugins.
• Activate Plugins One At A Time! - do not activate your plugins in bulk mode! If there is a problem with a plugin you will screw your entire system up if you don’t activate your plugins one at a time. If you have a problem with a plugin, but can’t access your plugin page anymore after the run-once screen pops up, you will have use a FTP client to delete the plugin or add a 1 to the extension. Make sure that if you use the automatic upgrade feature for plugins that the plugin that you are upgrading is deactivated before automatically upgrading it.

That should get you through the process of upgrading to WordPress 2.6 and deal with the login problem. Tomorrow I am going to post a tutorial on how to troubleshoot “WordPress White Screen of Death” problems. Remember to back up everything!

If you want to check out the best WordPress thems visit Revolution Themes, they are what I use for all my clients sites.

Google Everflux - Dancing Days Are Here Again

Everyone is talking about the new buzzword of the year “The Google Everflux”. What is it? Google used to roll out updates to their index slowly, over a week or so, which would cause many webmasters heartburn. This phenomenon was coined “The Google Dance” by the SEO pundits out there. The index was in flux, updating the SERP’s seemingly at random.

That is now replaced by what seams to be DAILY UPDATES! Google’s index is changing constantly now, causing many of us to need daily reporting on search engine placement. It’s almost as if Google got some steroids from BALCO and injected Googlebot with them.

How To Take Advantage Of Google Everflux

With Googlebot speeding around the Internet and indexing faster than ever, what is a webmaster to do? The answer is in Web 2.0 applications that provide your site with fresh and unique content on a daily basis. Of course having the systems in place are only the first step. You have to write all that content, and that can be quite a challenge to site owners that don’t have writing skills.

If you don’t have a blog attached to your website… GET ONE NOW.

If you have a small website, say under 25 pages, that is static, convert it to a WordPress system. If you don’t know how to do this yourself, give Get Found Now a call at 813-907-7688.

Blog Plagiarism and Scraping of Content

According to Dictionary.com, plagiarism is “the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one’s own original work.” The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines THEFT as: the act of stealing; specifically: the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it.

“Scraping” refers to copying off another site that’s not personally owned by the party doing the scraping.  Not referencing information sources and claiming that information as your own is plagiarism and content scraping. Spammer and ad-only blogs are chalked with scraped content stolen from other sites.

Plagiarism in the blogosphere is an extremely frustrating problem that is rabid on the web. In truth, anyone can steal your content and publish it on their site. After scrubbing it here and there, it now becomes “theirs.” It is extremely disheartening to see your hard work, laborious topic research and precious time cheaply ripped off.

This is precisely why I love Copyscape so much. It’s an indispensable blogging tool that uncovers plagiarism of your content. It’s also a free service. You simply type in the URL of your original page of content and Copyscape will pull up and expose any content that matches yours. It could be a sentence, a phrase, a snip-it or even an entire page of your content. 

Copyscape also has a service called Copysentry that searches the web for any copiers of your content and then emails you if any is detected. As a deterrent, you can also display plagiarism warning banners from Copyscape on your site.

If you discover that your original content is now sitting on someone else’s website, time is of the essence. See the Guide to Responding To Plagiarism for the best actions to take to get your content removed as quickly as possible.

Plagiarism/scraping is a dirty problem that most professional bloggers are unfortunately, very aware of. Plagiarism Today is a blog entirely dedicated to the subject of plagiarism, packed with insightful articles and informative tips.

Map Communications

Whether your business is large or small, MAP Communications, a nationwide answering service and call center since 1991, can provide you with custom solutions for your company’s particular needs. If you are fed up with your current outmoded answering service or simply want to enhance your business presence by adding a professional answering service to the mix, you owe it to yourself to check out the answering services that Map Communications offers.

Most companies depend on the phone for business so it’s paramount that they provide their clients/customers with professional customer service and prompt communication response time. People want to know that you value their business. This translates into having their calls answered by a live person rather than a machine.

In today’s highly competitive market, a weak phone presence is not something you want to take a chance on. Having a professional answering service conveys to your callers that you appreciate their business and have hired professionals to ensure their call will get directed to the appropriate party and in a timely manner.

With Map Communications custom solutions, your business will be set up with the exact combination of services you need, such as message tracking, call forwarding, dispatched text messages to cellular phones, 800 numbers, call screening, voice mail services and immediate attention to each and every caller. Basically, Map Communications can provide you with any customized answering service solution based on your company’s specific requirements.

Map Communications also offers these cutting edge features:

• Custom Account & Software Design
• Proprietary Software & In-house IT Dept
• Interface with your Company Website
• Dynamic Online Account Access
• Online Messaging via the Web or Email
• Advanced On-Call Roster Services

Map Communications will even let you try out their custom answering service solutions for a 7 day free trial, so that you see for yourself why they are the premier service used by major companies nationwide.

Give them a call today and speak to a live person ready to take your call!

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