Dashboard white screen

Hi, mattdeandrum, & welcome. First, sorry this is happening. 2nd, we really appreciate the detailed explanations you gave, including error msgs–it helps greatly. I wish everyone did that! We could help far more folks far more quickly.

Looks as though you’ve got a corrupted installation. The error specifically points to misc.php in your wp-admin/includes directory. Perhaps simply reuploading that particular file will work, but my own suggestion is that you consider reuploading WordPress, either via FTP (& hopefully secure FTP) or your hosting control panel, as the odds are that if 1 file is corrupted, others will likely be also.

Do you know how to do that?

Matt, first of all, pages, posts, etc., are actually stored in a database as opposed to WordPress files, so your site should be just fine.

Could you please tell us what operating system you use so we can provide you w/appropriate information?

Sorry for the delay, Matt. W/Christmas being so close, it’s jus hectic. Every year around this time I wish I could just check out from my life for a week or 2 lol. I’m a pastor’s wife, so perhaps you can imagine.

The link to download WordPress is:
http://wordpress.org/wordpress-4.1.zip
Please *save* the file to your computer in a convenient place where you can easily locate it–unlike my convenient places where I so carefully put stuff never to see it again.

This zip file is designed to extract WordPress into its own folder called none other than wordpress. However, it appears you’ve installed WordPress into the web root as opposed to a separate folder, so we’re going to have to do some things a bit differently so that the files will be uploaded to the root of your server as opposed to a separate folder.

Once the file is downloaded, Please right-click it & choose ‘Extract All’ from the popup menu.
Browse to where you wish to extract the files, i.e., My Documents, & please leave the ‘Show Extracted Files’ box checked. then click the ‘Extract’ button.

At this point, you’ll see you’re in a folder called wordpress. The actual path, if you extracted it to My Documents, is c:\users\yourusername\my documents\wordpress\wordpress. Please double-click the folder.

Next, please click ‘Edit > Select All’ (or if you’re like me, just press control a).
Please next click ‘Edit > Cut’ or press control x.
Now, please press your backspace key;
click ‘Edit > Paste’ or control v.

You can now safely delete the wordpress folder as it’s empty. The new path is my documents\wordpress.

Now you can either use FTP (hopefully secure FTP) or your hosting control panel file manager. Make certain you’re in your web root folder, i.e., looks like yours is public_html. Choose upload from the options, browse to the wordpress folder on your computer, that you extracted the files to, select it, & go have multiple coffees–it’ll likely take awhile.

Let’s see if that doesn’t help, & please do let us know, ok? Also, if my instructions weren’t clear (& they might not be–my brain’s mush–don’t hesitate to ask me to clarify.

What are you using, Mat–an FTP client or the file manager component of your host control panel? We need the information to better assist. Thanks. & thanks for being understanding regarding my hectic life. I know it’s disconcerting when your website doesn’t work, so I’ll try to be as prompt as possible for as long as possible.

Matt, I really think at this point you’ll be better off w/an FTP client.

You can get one from:
filezilla.org
or
winscp.net

I don’t know whom you host with so I can’t help you set it up for secure FTP. Ports for that are nonstandard–many are 22, some are 2222, & some are something else altogether. Often you can find out by googling hostname secure ftp, where hostname is the name of your hosting provider. Most hosts also have knowledge bases that contain this information, or a call or email to them will almost certainly get you what you want. There are still a few holdouts that don’t support secure FTP–if that’s the case, then my advice is simply get another host.

No matter which FTP client you get, the interface should be fairly intuitive, i.e., they have typical Windows Explorer panels.

Once you’ve gotten & installed an FTP client, please let us know which 1, & whether you need help using it.