For about 3 days my WordPress site, StrategicPoints.com was not working. This was not an accident. I was playing around on a Sunday afternoon showing somebody how easy it to use, ironically, and I basically destroyed the site. So this was not an act of god, it was something I did.
Well, if you are reading this and your site comes up with a blank screen, because you simply changed your theme, and you can’t get back into your wordpress admin, you are in the same boat I was in.
How Did This Happen
Interestly enough, the theme I chose to switch to used to work. That is, it used to work under a previous WordPress version. This is something that you can control. Just don’t go switching your themes like I did. Eventually you will hit a theme that is not compatible with your current WordPress version. That is when you have to do some stuff to get it back, you may not have the ability to do.
What Did I Do?
First I determined it was from switching the WordPress theme. Our brains get kind of cloudy right after we do something, especially if you get stressed out. You may not remember what happened. Of course, if this has happened to you, you are probably already googling, “my wordpress site disappeared” looking for some guidance.
In order to fix this problem, I had to get WordPress to point back to the original theme. I had to FTP into the site (and this was a site I don’t typically log into).
Once I ftp’d to the site, I copied the offending theme directory back to my PC and renamed it old. I then renamed the theme directory on the server to the name of the current theme. This is a temp fix, and for a moment the homepage showed up on WordPress.
Then I copied the good theme down as well to my PC, and made sure I had a copy back on the server with the right name. I then went in and moved the site to the original theme it came with. This gave me access to wordpress. With temporary access to WordPress I had to go in and specifically activate the original theme.
Site is back up and running. This blog entry helped me out considerably.