• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer

lawsie

The long-term storage silo of a human mind

  • Andrew Culture
  • Now Playing on Classic FM
  • Now Playing on 6 Music
  • Buy me a pint
You are here: Home / Tech / How to fix Drupal White Screen of Death/ blank screen

How to fix Drupal White Screen of Death/ blank screen

Published December 24, 2009 by lawsie 4 Comments

Last Updated on February 18, 2023

When installing or configuring (or sometimes when just using) the popular CMS (content management system) Drupal you’ll be faced with the dreaded WSOD (white screen of death).

This is often because your hosting set up isn’t allowing the memory hungry Drupal a big enough bite of the server’s memory pie. There are several suggestions throughout the web that this can be fixed by appending the php.ini file in the root of your site, although you may struggle to find php.ini for various reasons.

I build Drupal sites in a cloud/ application server environment and believe I have found a far more effective way of solving the Drupal white screen error.

Fixing the Drupal white screen error using Settings.php

  1. Browse to YOURSITE/sites/default and (after making a backup of it) open up settings.php
  2. Scroll down to the section labelled as PHP settings, if you’re using a code editor like DreamWeaver this starts at line 128
  3. Below the line ini_set(‘url_rewriter.tags’, ”); add another line like this – ini_set(‘memory_limit’ , ‘300M’);

Depending the exact details of your hosting this should solve your white screen errors.

Related from lawsie.com

  • Copying text from one source to the web using Notepad.
  • Managing multiple WordPress sites – the easy way to update plugins!
  • WP-Property sidebar below content – how to fix
  • Virgin Media V+ dead (bricked) – how to fix
  • Forwarding a domain name to a website using your easily.co.uk account
  • Jekyll site hosted on CloudFront & S3 not updating

Filed Under: Tech Tagged With: cms, drupal, php, web design

Have you found this content useful?

Buy me a pint

This website isn't packed with obnoxious advertising but it does cost money to keep alive. Every little donation is a big help!

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Unknown says

    January 8, 2010 at 1:15 am

    this is not a full fix by any stretch. usually a memory limit error will be thrown, not a wsod if this is the problem.

    wsod is more commonly a syntax problem, or calling a nonexistant function

    Reply
  2. Andrew Culture says

    January 8, 2010 at 3:23 pm

    Certainly not the only solution, but one that's worked for me a few times, but then I always use the same server environment so I guess it would work repeatedly!

    Reply
  3. Anonymous says

    November 27, 2012 at 8:27 am

    Sorry to tell you that this solution doesn't work for me, maybe the reason cause white page is different

    Reply
  4. Drupal Development Company says

    April 4, 2013 at 9:57 am

    Great information about drupal white screen.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Footer

Things I’m currently working on

  • Laws Jet Stream – Jet washing services
  • I’m currently building WebCaretakers.com, a hub of practical calculators for things I get asked about a lot.

Copyright © 2026 ยท Site wholly owned by Andrew Laws Associates Ltd | I also own and operate webcaretakers.com

SEO by Yeseo

  • Home
  • Observations
  • Consumer Info
  • Tech
  • Andrew Culture
  • Musician Stuff
  • ‘kin useful online calculators from WebCareTakers
  • Chilli sauce
  • Graveyard
  • About me
  • Privacy Policy
  • Cookies
  • Disclaimer
  • Contact me
  • Buy me a pint