Here"s why you"re getting the Magento white screen

In short, you have an error.

Magento is a PHP application that runs on a web server. Your web server is configured to hide errors for production websites as a security measure. We don’t need vandals breaking your Ecommerce store on purpose and interpreting the errors to find a crack in your system. This is common practice for any server that is designed to run a production application.

So how do you fix it? Although I cannot tell you how to fix the exact problem that you’re having, I can show you how to figure out WHAT problem that you’re having. With this information you can head to the unofficial Magento Support Forums and receive assistance from a programmer.

Step 1: Find your log files

I could tell you how to enable errors to be displayed whenever they’re encountered, but that is not as secure and I don’t know what kind of store that you’re operating. Instead we can just go to your log files and locate a complete print out of the error.

Once you’ve logged into your hosting server and located the root of your Magento Installation, then navigate to the following paths:

/var/log

/var/report

Within these two directories you will find a number of files that are logging the procedural activity of your Magento Installation.

Step 2: Locate the primary error

Within the report directory you may find a number of files. Delete all of the log files, it’s ok, they will be regenerated with every error. Once you’ve cleared the report directory, then you’ll want to reload the webpage that is showing a Magento white page.

Revisit your report directory and a log file that consists of all numbers as a file name will be there. Download and open this file, it’s contents contain a complete report of your error. If you know how to interpret PHP and this log, great! Otherwise head over to the Magento Support Forums and ask an expert.

Here"s why you"re getting the Magento white screen