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I've been modifying a wordpress theme based on twentyten. I added something to functions.php, and made a slight syntax error, and immediately the whole of wordpress just loaded a blank page. No admin panel.

So, I got FTP access and restored the file. Wordpress is still totally broken. So, I disabled the theme via FTP, still nothing. I disabled the plugins, nothing.

Is there anything that a syntax error in functions.php could do to the wp install, and how could I revert it if so? If not, should I just totally reinstall wordpress?

Thank you for any help.

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closed as too localized by toscho♦ Jun 2 '12 at 4:43

This question is unlikely to help any future visitors; it is only relevant to a small geographic area, a specific moment in time, or an extraordinarily narrow situation that is not generally applicable to the worldwide audience of the internet. For help making this question more broadly applicable, see the FAQ.

1 Answer

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Some things I would try would be first, check if you have any cache plugins installed, if so, remove them, just put them outside the plugin directory.

If that doesn't work, you could just move the theme causing the issues (move it to wp-content folder), and your site should default back to Twenty Ten after a refresh, then move the theme back and try to re-activate it.

If it still causes the same issue, then whatever you did to your functions was not reverted and you might want to show the actual code you added/removed that caused the issue.

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It turned out that the other person working on the project had tried to restore functions.php but did so to wp-include by accident, overwriting a WP core file by the same name. Thanks anyway. – DSKrepps Jul 21 '11 at 22:01
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I would avoid cowboy coding by not working on the same server as a team member. It's best practice to have a versioned copy running on your local machine, then deploy changes to the dev server. – Brian Fegter Sep 23 '11 at 1:54
"Too many programmers spoil the code just as surely as too many cooks spoil the broth." This is where SVN or another version management system comes in very handy. If there's an issue with a new version, just roll it back. – SickHippie Feb 27 '12 at 23:35

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