I had two issues today on two different sites and both were resolved after uninstalling Bad Behaviour and W3 Total Cache.
Here on Webologist this theme broke. I had no idea why, but upgrading WordPress seemed to have been the cause. I had flushed the cache several times, uploaded the theme again, reinstalled the latest version of WordPress, but in every case the theme was broken. The stylesheet was just lost.
Then on another site one of the pages came up blank, just a white page, often refereed to as the WordPress White Page Of Death. All other pages loaded OK. Again, I emptied the W3 Total cache, I reinstalled WordPress, I edited that post and changed the publication date – i.e. I tried a bunch of random things to try to kick it back into life.
I then checked the code in the post to make sure something odd had not been inserted, I checked the comments to make sure nothing odd was going on. I only discovered the problem because I had a new comment in the moderation queue.
As a last resort, shortly after 6pm, I contacted a friend on Skype, just to see if he was getting the white page too. He was. And he could see the other pages all OK. Fortunately for me, Mat knew what he was doing, and he told me after how he investigated. Needless to say, he proposed the changes that fixed the site. I guess it is this sort of fast and accurate diagnosis that has given Brit-Net Web Design such as good reputation down on the South Coast.
So, what was the problem. First Mat suggested that I uninstalled Bad Behavior. I did. That did not actually fix the problem. Next suggestion was to uninstall W3 Total Cache. That fixed it straight away. I then did the same on Webologist and tried activating this theme again, and hey presto, old theme is back. The new theme I was using was not very nice, so glad to get my old one working again.
So from now on I am not using Bad Behavior. I have also replaced W3 Total Cache with WP Super Cache and WP Minify. All works well.
So if you get the WordPress White Page Of Death then first check to see if these plugins are installed, and if they are, uninstall them.
So what did Mat do? He checked the headers of the page in this tool: Rex Swain’s HTTP Viewer
This showed to him that there was a problem being reported with Bad Behaviour and then after that was deactivated, W3 Total Cache. I do not know exactly what was shown. Actually, he did Skype me this:
it is returning an error 403…[17:52:54] Mat : Brit-net: (i wasn’t seeing that, were you?[17:52:55] Mat : Brit-net: p>We’re·sorry,·but·we·could·not·fulfill·your·request·for(LF)/lose-weight/how-to-lose-cat-flap-in-1-week·on·this·server.</p>(LF)<p>An·invalid·request·was·received·from·your·browser.·This·may·be·caused·by·a·malfunctioning·proxy·server·or·browser·privacy·software.</p>(LF)<p>Your·technical·support·key·is:·<strong>4524-be30-1756-6707</strong></p>
Then there was a link to this error message:
Your request was intercepted by Bad Behavior, security software which protects the Web site you visited from malicious activity, such as hackers, spam and viruses. We apologize for the inconvenience, but your request matched a profile of suspicious activity. This problem is usually quite easy to fix.
I have heard people before say that Bad Behavior sometimes locks good people out of their own websites, and clients also!
We started chatting about how WordPress is becoming a bit bloated in general now and that premium wordpress themes are killing WordPress for some sites, then we realised it was time to stop working and go home. Well, Mat went home, I blogged this.
