Steps to solve Magento blank page issue

Magento is one of the most popular e-commerce platform that also happens to be open source. Written in PHP, it is used by over 250,000 merchants globally. But it’s not uncommon for both these merchants to run into the Andmin Blank Page Problem which is also known as the “White Screen of Death” problem. If you were or are being troubled by this error, we’ll guide you through on how to fix it.

What causes The Admin Blank Page Error in Magento?

Whenever you get this error, you’ll not even know whether the page has finished loading or is in process. This problem is called White Screen of Death or WSOD because it throws a blank white screen with no error message or page content. This error is also common in Drupal and WordPress platforms besides Magento.

So what actually is the reason behind this error? It turns out there is no single reason. A number of thing can result in WSOD. Since Magento doesn’t show what is causing this error, you need to find out the source first.

To do this, you need to navigate into your index.php file of the application. Open the file and look for the following code:

Code:
#ini_set(‘display_errors’, 1);
Remove the “#” at the beginning. This would display the error. If that doesn’t work, then you’ll have to work with exception.log and system.log file.

But by removing the hash symbol, you’ll find that WSOD error is persisting because of the following reasons:

Insufficient memory limit

As you keep on adding features and plugins into your Magento store, it gets bigger and bigger in size. If your server disk space remains the same, then you will face the risk of insufficient memory at some point in time. You can rapidly consume your allotted PHP memory limit if you have installed multiple large-size plugins, deployed memory-intensive themes, or are receiving heavy website traffic.

To fix this problem, you simply need to increase the limit of the application. Here are the steps involved:
  • Open index.php file
  • Look for the “ini_set(‘memory_limit’, ‘128M’)” code.
  • Increase it to 256M.
  • Save the file and exit
If it’s already set at 256M, then you need to contact your hosting provider.

Magento Compiler

A compiler in Magento enables you to unify different include files into one. But to make changes to the installation files in Magento, you need to disable the the compiler.

Magento admins often make the following mistakes:
  • They do not disable compilation before upgrading Magento, because of which new version becomes out of sync.
  • Have either enabled the compiler within Magento admin. This interferes with other extension and modules that were installed recently.
  • The compiler was enabled, but perhaps forgot to run it later before enabling.
These mistakes often result in compiler errors in Magento which in turn results in the blank page error.

To fix this error, you need to log into your user account via SSH. Once in, disable the compiler module by executing the following command:

Code:
php -f shell/compiler.php – disable
Finally, clear all the present compiled files and flush the cache data. To do this, go to sessions and cache folders in root “var/” directory and remove all the contents.

Invalid permission for var/ directory

But if you do not have the correct permission to access the var/ directory, then Magento can throw the Admin blank page error. If you’re aware, Magento performs a lot of caching under the hood. Also classes are generated automatically by it. These are stored in the root var/ directory. This folder is granted a specific limit which is between 600-700 because they also have to be writable.
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