August 11, 2019 — “Have you ever updated your WordPress site or plugins, and suddenly found yourself looking at The White Screen of Death? What you thought was going to be a routine update has just brought down your entire website, and the panic sets in fast. If this is your live website, that can quickly translate to loss of revenue, customer trust, and a lot of time and money down the drain. Not to mention the very bad day you are about to have.
In this talk Jamie covers tips and strategies for keeping your site updated safely, and how to avoid breaking your live site through use of a staging site that runs alongside your live website. Big content changes, updates, and trying out new designs increases the potential for disaster when these changes are made directly to your live website. Fortunately, there are many options for creating and managing a staging site, ranging from the most simple click-to-push, to more complex solutions integrated into a developers’ workflow. She will show you how to set up your very own staging server in a few different ways, so you can push that Update button without putting your live site in jeopardy.”

Presentation Slides »

June 19, 2017 — The white screen of death! You were simply uploading content, updating a WordPress plugin, or clicking on this neat thing to see what it does and then your screen goes blank. You cannot login to your website. You can’t even see your WP login screen anymore. HELP!

In this session, you’ll learn how to break your WordPress site by:
– Updating to the latest version of WordPress
– Updating your plugins
– Adding new plugins
– Adding 301 redirects
– And much more

Most importantly, you’ll learn how these seemingly innocuous updates that should be easy to make on your website can break your WordPress site if not done properly.

Takeaways:

Attendees will learn that without the proper research, thought, and sequence of events, it can be very easy for a new user (or sometimes a very experienced one) to break their WordPress website.
They will get tips on how to avoid breaking their site and getting the dreaded white screen of death with a presentation with dry humor.

Presentation Slides »

April 29, 2017 — The best thing about WordPress can sometimes also be the worst thing about WordPress: Plugins and Themes. Lucy will give you the tools you need to understand why your site breaks, how to find the cause, and how to fix it.

August 21, 2014 — Hanni Ross will talk about what happens when you break your blog – and how to fix it.

October 31, 2008 — Lorelle VanFossen talks through the importance of pushing WordPress to edge with her presentation on WordPress hacks at WordCamp SF 2008

Video by John P