Moodle in English: White screen when selecting other theme

White screen when selecting other theme

by Klaas Hobo - Saturday, December 9, 2017, 6:23 PM

I have been playing around with a new installation of Moodle a few days and build me a nice configuration. I am faily familiar with Moodle. I switched to the boost theme for the default theme. Then I wanted to switch to another theme but got a white screen. I cannot get to the menu's in Moodle again. I have removed the boost folder but then Moodle comes up with a message that 'a programmer will need to fix the problem' and after putting the folder back all I get is the same white screen. I tried in all browsers and removed cache....

Is there a file where I can simply change the active theme in a config file to see or that will work? Any other suggestions?

Oh yeah, because I was trying some stuff out there is no backup ;-(.

I'm using Moodle 3.3.2.

Rgds, Klaas

Re: White screen when selecting other theme

by Ken Task - Saturday, December 9, 2017, 8:19 PM

Well, you;'ve learned your first lesson ... never remove core code - unless you know what you are doing.

Got linux?

Two possible ways ...

Install git.

Following assumes moodle code in /var/www/html/ and in a moodle directory ... if not ajust.

cd /var/www/html/

git clone git://git.moodle.org/moodle.git mdlgit

That creates a 'mdlgit' directory and acquires the git branches of moodle code into 'mdlgit'

When that finishes

cd mdlgit

git branch --track MOODLE_33_STABLE origin/MOODLE_33_STABLE
git checkout MOODLE_33_STABLE

Check version

fgrep '$release' version.php

Say 3.2.x (probably a little higher than what you have)

You are located in /var/www/html/mdlgit/ your code is in /var/www/html/moodle/

cd theme

cp -rp boost /var/www/html/moodle/theme/

cd /var/www/html/moodle/theme/

chown apache:apache boost (change ownerships to user under which web service runs)

Try your browser now.

cd /path/to/moodle/code/moodle

nano config.php

Add the following line ... before the comment at the end of config.php

$CFG->theme="clean';

(could also use 'more')

That might work *IF* the clean or more theme doesn't require 'boost' directory to be present.

Good luck!

'spirit of sharing', Ken

Average of ratings:Useful (1)

Re: White screen when selecting other theme

by Emma Richardson - Saturday, December 9, 2017, 8:52 PM

Or download the same version of the core code from moodle and then copy back the boost folder, fix permissions. Though I am curious - the white screen appeared after to switched to a different theme so why did you delete boost? What was the theme you switched to? Have you tried deleting the cache and localcache folders from your MoodleDATA folder?

Average of ratings:Useful (1)

Re: White screen when selecting other theme

by Klaas Hobo - Saturday, December 9, 2017, 9:19 PM

Hi Emma,

Thank you for your suggestions.

I have cleaned up the cache and localcache dir's. And now it's working again.

Only when I want to create another user there is a white screen again.....

When I would replace the core then can I keep the settings of my installation?

To give some info on the first actions:

I run into a problem when swiching from boost to essential with the white screen. Did not know what to do and perhaps Moodle would go to clean or default when there was no boost theme any more....

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Re: White screen when selecting other theme

by Emma Richardson - Sunday, December 10, 2017, 12:10 AM

So you should have removed essential folder, not boost! It is still trying to go to essential - if you remove that folder, you should be ok as the site should recognize essential is no longer there and default to boost - or did you do that?

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Re: White screen when selecting other theme

by Klaas Hobo - Saturday, December 9, 2017, 8:54 PM

Hi Ken,

The first suggestion is a bit hard for me as I'm not that much of an administrator on the server side . So I tried the second one. That works great and my Moodle is back in sight!

Because I want my adjusted theme in essential I have replaced the theme name with essential and then all looks great again. Only after a few clicks I found out that not all is well again as I cannot get into site administration any more. I can click on the link but there is no response.

Do you have suggestions for that as well?

Thank you so far!

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Re: White screen when selecting other theme

by Ken Task - Saturday, December 9, 2017, 9:53 PM

Read Emma's method. (+1 Emma! [in this case])

Do that.

After doing that, edit config.php and comment out the line you added for using the other theme by adding // in front of that line. Save the file. No need to restart anything, just attempt with browser. May as well keep the line there since you are going to 'tinker' some more.

2nd lesson .... sometimes bandaid fixes, don't work 100%.

Essentials is a 'heavy' theme in that there are many, many, many, many options.

3rd lesson ... moodle sites are 'inline' ... meaning the theme is all controlling. IF the theme breaks, site could break partially (as in can't get to admin areas) or 'white screen of death'.

Once you get the site to return, mIght be a good time to learn how to make a full site backup. Especially a database dump and an archive of the code directory ... and the flip of that ... how to restore a site backup.

'spirit of sharing', Ken

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Re: White screen when selecting other theme

by Klaas Hobo - Saturday, December 9, 2017, 10:37 PM

Hi Ken and Emma,

I'm back in business!

I have followed a path that's lookes like Emma suggested. I have reinstalled Moodle on another path, used the same db and copied the config.php and adjusted the config.php there where needed (e.g. the path directives).

So now all works well and of course I made a backup right away .

@Ken, I can make backups and do mostly. This Moodle install was to demo and not that important at first but later more and more.... Anyway now its secure .

Thank you both for your help!

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