Webdev, fix thine own functions.php

Okay – 1) I’m no webdev and 2) the title is a bad attempt to change the old “physician, heal thyself!” to fit my purposes. Mea culpa. Mea máxima culpa. Still, here I am with a working login to my WordPress install, previously unreachable. Here’s the story nice and short because zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

A few months ago I realized I could no longer access the back-end for my WordPress install (wp-admin.) The page would load, but nothing was there. A quick look at the source showed two lines of blank space. WHAT DOES IT MEAN?? I got someone at Bluehost to load a different theme which seemed to solve the problem. Changing back it *appeared* that everything was fine, but only on the browser in which I first accessed the wp-admin page. I figured I would make a backup and then, worst-case, delete and reinstall the source. I installed Updraft and was notified that my site was producing “extra white-space” that could complicate the backup/restore process. Interesting! Some searching around the internet (after disabling all plugins, which didn’t help) landed me on a StackExchange thread where someone claimed that removing the extra white-space in, and at the end of, his functions.php file did the trick.

It did. Problem solved. The end.

For good measure, I removed redundant spaces throughout all my .php files (in the theme folder of the site install) as well. I did all of this through the Bluehost cpanel which didn’t require a working login to the site itself.

Lesson learned: pay attention to the formatting of your .php files folks. The real end. You’re welcome.