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1. msmeritt
   Member
   Posted 4 years ago #

   I see various other posts about blank screen, including some which occured after installation. However, I have discovered something particular about my situation, and it doesn't correspond with any of the other posts that I can tell, though maybe it does and I just don't know enough about certain terminology to know. In any case:

   I just created four new WordPress installations. All are using the latest version, all seemed to install perfectly fine, yet all show a completely white screen with no source code whatsoever. This is true even when the default theme is selected and no plug-ins are activated.

   This is all particularly strange since just a few days ago I did a new WordPress installation with the same current version and all went fine.

   What I have figured out is that there seems to be an .htaccess issue. Three of the four new installations have no .htaccess in their addon domain folder, while the fourth does but its contents are basically blank. On the other hand, my previous installations, including the one I just did a few days ago, all have .htaccess folders which have particular rewrite rules that WP added automatically.

   All the domain folders (new four and older ones) have the same permissions, so I'm not sure why WP would have failed to create/update the .htaccess files on these new installations. Any ideas?

2. msmeritt
   Member
   Posted 4 years ago #

   A bit of additional info:

   --I informed my hosting provider of everything I just said above, and they say that this must be a WordPress issue.

   --I manually copied a properly formatted .htaccess file from one of my other WP installations into the root directory of one of the new ones -- no effect, so I deleted it.

   --I manually attempted to visit [domain].com/index.php to see if anything would come up, but nothing.

   So all signs are pointing to something very much up with WordPress. Looking forward to some advice!

3. VeraBass
   Member
   Posted 4 years ago #

   the first one you did worked properly and the next 4 didn't ...do each of the 5 have their own database?

4. msmeritt
   Member
   Posted 4 years ago #

   Thanks for helping. Yes, they each have their own database, each created the same way, each with the same single MySQL user assigned with all privileges.

5. VeraBass
   Member
   Posted 4 years ago #

   addon domain

   Does that mean that you have an index.php and an htaccess at the main domain level above the subdomains, or is the main domain installation (with its htaccess) in a subfolder?

6. msmeritt
   Member
   Posted 4 years ago #

   Here's my whole setup. It's a single cPanel driven hosting account.

   In the main public_html folder is a WordPress installation, v 2.1.2, been working fine for many months. So it's got its own index.php, MySQL database and automatically created .htaccess.

   A couple of months ago, I created an add-on domain in the account, did a WordPress installation there as well, v 2.2.3. It's got its own index.php, MySQL database and automatically created .htaccess, and it's been working fine since I installed it.

   Several days ago, I added a second add-on domain with a v 2.3.1 WP installation, again with its own index.php, MySQL database and automatically created .htaccess. There was an oddity surrounding search engine visibility -- see http://wordpress.org/support/topic/144615 -- but aside from that all has been fine since I installed it.

   So now there are four more add-on domains (i.e., add-on domains 3-6) and four more WP installations (i.e., installation 4-7), each done exactly the same as the above 2.3.1 installation in every respect except different themes and one or two differences in plug-ins. However, even before I'd selected alternate themes or activated any plug-ins, I'd seen that all four produced a completely white screen.

   Hopefully this clarifies things. Please let me know if you need more info, and thanks again for helping me troubleshoot.

7. msmeritt
   Member
   Posted 4 years ago #

   Just to be extra clear, since you specifically asked about folders, all 6 of these add-on domains are done in the standard way per cPanel, i.e., they exist in folders directly inside public_html. I.e.:

   [public_html folder]
   .htaccess, index.php, etc. for 2.1.2 installation working just fine from start until now, MySQL database #1
   [add-on #1 folder]
   .htaccess, index.php, etc. for 2.2.3 installation working just fine from start until now, MySQL database #2
   [add-on #2 folder]
   .htaccess, index.php, etc. for 2.3.1 installation working just fine from start until now, MySQL database #3
   [add-on #3 folder]
   .htaccess, index.php, etc. for 2.3.1 installation with blank screen, MySQL database #4
   [add-on #4 folder]
   .htaccess, index.php, etc. for 2.3.1 installation with blank screen, MySQL database #5
   [add-on #5 folder]
   .htaccess, index.php, etc. for 2.3.1 installation with blank screen, MySQL database #6
   [add-on #6 folder]
   .htaccess, index.php, etc. for 2.3.1 installation with blank screen, MySQL database #7

   And, again, the same one MySQL user that I created is assigned to all seven of these MySQL databases.

   Again, anything else I can say to clarify, let me know. Thanks.

8. msmeritt
   Member
   Posted 4 years ago #

   Eeeeh, the way the above post came out, it's not clear, I tried to make it hierarchical. The .htaccess, index.php, etc. for the 1st item are inside the public_html folder. Each f the 6 add-on folders are also there direclty inside public_html. Each of them has their respective .htaccess, index.php, etc., inside the add-on folder.

   And I realize now I misspoke, hastily copying and pasting. The fact is that, for the last four items, 3 of them have no .htaccess at all, and one has .htaccess but its complete contents are:

   # BEGIN WordPress

   # END WordPress

   ...whereas the first three installations' .htaccess has automatically added:

   # BEGIN WordPress
   <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
   RewriteEngine On
   RewriteBase /
   RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
   RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
   RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
   </IfModule>

   # END WordPress

9. VeraBass
   Member
   Posted 4 years ago #

   lol it's not easy to convey such things
   I keep thinking that there's a conflict somewhere, but since none of the installations are in subfolders, and each subdomain has, I assume, it's own separate db username, psswd, and (if they're all using the same db schema) their own table prefixes, then I'd still go back to the host first on the database thing. Can't make a specific suggestion for that because every host is different, but I've had the situation where a new additional database needed something turned on at their end, or took some other step to activate properly at one level or another.

   The only other thought is that, since you have three identical problems, could they all have the same file(s) missing or only half uploaded or some other such accidental little thing?

10. msmeritt
    Member
    Posted 4 years ago #

    Technically, add-on domains are subfolders of the main hosting account, so I assume you're referring only to subfolders that truly act only as subfolders and not also add-on domains.

    I'll go back to the host and see if they may have anymore insights. However, I also had thought that there might be a problem in the upload somehow, though since the installation went fine and I am able to fully navigate around the dashboard, if there is an upload problem, it's definitely something not so obvious.

    So the question would be how to handle any re-upload given that the thing is now installed. I'm not upgrading so couldn't follow those instructions. Is it safe to literally just upload everything all over again on top of what's there, overwriting? Should I delete everything that's there first and then reupload, or would that somehow mess things up since it's already installed? Some other thing to do?

11. VeraBass
    Member
    Posted 4 years ago #

    They'd appear as subfolders in a CPanel view, but if each one is a sub-domain then they are each the starting point of a separate url.

    ie.

    yoursite.com lives at the public_html level (or whatever your host calls it)

    apples.yoursite.com
    oranges.yoursite.com
    and such each live at the next level down (just as subfolders would) but they start their own paths, which enables the creation of a separate installation in each.

    On the re-uploading, sure you can simply upload the same file(s) and replace. If you aren't getting any error message, or anything at all, then it's more possible that one of more files are just missing. Using an ftp tool such as FileZilla makes it pretty easy to scan the contents of both side by side to check that you have all the same files and that they're all the same size.

    If everything is not totally identical to the previous installations which worked fine, replace the different bits with the original and see if it works.

12. msmeritt
    Member
    Posted 4 years ago #

    When two messages ago you mentioned a possible conflict somewhere, I wrote my ISP again, and they confirmed everything looked fine and it should be a WP issue.

    So I went ahead and started comparing the files on the server to those on my local drive for one of the messed up add-on domains. I quickly saw an odd discrepancy -- index.php in the root folder was a different size, much smaller on the server. I took a look and saw something very bizarre and unexpected. Instead of the usual "short and sweet" code with the WP_USE_THEMES and wp-blog-header stuff, I saw, inside the php brackets, only this:

    // Silence is golden.

    Bizarre!!! I uploaded the original index.php over the odd one on the server and, voila, the site worked.

    I checked the other three messed up add-ons, exact same situation, exact same solution.

    Looking in the forums, I see other people mentioning "silence is golden" and at least this one provides the piece of info that explains the whole thing that happened to me:

    http://wordpress.org/support/topic/108650?replies=3

    That silence is golden bit is the standard index.php file from within the wp-content folder. How did it come to overwrite the index.php file from my root folder? Because of a mess-up that I had in the original FTP of all the WP files. I've noticed before that my FTP program - Cyberduck - exhibits odd behavior if, on my local side, I have open any folders that are being FTPd -- it uploads the folder and its contents correctly nested, but then it also uploades the folder and any of its visible contents into the root folder, not nested. And I actually knew that, in uploading the WP files for these 4 add-ons, I'd accidentally had wp-content open -- I noticed the extra copies of the plugins folder, themes folder, etc., and I deleted them. I just didn't think twice about index.php. Obviously what happened was that this extra duplicate upload to root of the wp-content folder contents happened after the original correct root level index.php was uplaoded, so the wp-content/index.php simply overwrote the regular version -- and I never thought to check that along with the other duplicated wp-content stuff. Thus screwing me up and causing this whole thing, now resolved.

    Unbelievable! I'll obviously be much more careful next time about this.

    Thanks for your help troubleshooting. In the end, it was your suggestion to simply review the files, to see if anything was "missing or only half uploaded or some other such accidental little thing," that led me to the solution. Obviously it was some other such accidental ilttle thing :) Thanks again!

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