It’s WP update time, and I’m upgrading to 2.9.2 – not a huge hardship, since it’s all one-click now (unless there’s a plugin conflict, of course). However, a problem arose: one of my blog disappeared completely. Nada. Nothing. Just a nice white page, without anything whatsoever.

In the end, it was because of old wp-cache-config.php and advanced-cache.php files in my /wp-content/ directory. Briefly, these files caused a cache issue that was not needed on this blog. Remove them, and the blog was AOK.

The reason for mentioning this? I thought I’d explain how I troubleshooted (troubleshot?) the issue. Perhaps you’ve encountered a similar problem, but even not, here’s how you can narrow down many WordPress blog problems and troubleshoot your blogs:

• View the source. Just because a page is blank doesn’t mean it is blank. For example, a white page could still include HTML head and body tags. If part of them are missing, this might be a clue to where the program broke.
• Try to log in. If the main page is gone but the admin page works, start with theme/plugin issues. In this case, every link into the blog failed, so I knew it was a bit bigger.
• Try elsewhere on the site. I checked other blogs, other sections (such as a forum). No problems there, but if there was, I’d focus on site issues (server problems, htaccess issues, bandwidth/space constraints, etc).
• Try the site basics. Via FTP, I could confirm all the files were there and appeared complete. I logged into cPanel and confirmed the database was there and was fine.
• Tweak. For instance, with my FTP tool, I could change file names. Rename htaccess to something else, and then reload the page. Do the same for wp-config.php. I even downloaded, edited, and uploaded a modified wp-config.php, with a bad password, hoping it would complain. Nothing, which led me to realize the blog startup was not even getting to the database access section.
• Upgrade. I was planning to do this anyways, but I wanted to wait until I solved the problem, since this often adds problem on top of problem. However, it seemed it was not going to be solved anytime soon. I uploaded the new files directly, but keeping the current files safe by moving them to a separate location (I wanted them for later checking). I also DID NOT reuse the /wp-content/ directory (with my plugins and theme) yet.

My reason for this was simple: I wanted a pristine installation to see if it could start up. In fact, it did, and I was relieved. Yet when I started adding my /wp-content/ back in I encountered problems. The reason, as I said was those files, which triggered caching where they shouldn’t.

If it appeared I just did divide and conquer, you’re right – breaking things up into smaller sections makes for easier checking, and eventually caught up with the problem. Look to breaking up a WordPress issue like this, and you might find troubleshooting easier and problem-solving faster.