Yesterday evening i decided that it was about time to upgrade my WordPress from 2.7 to 2.8 and after successfully backing up all my files, i ran the upgrade.
It went smooth. I upgraded the database, activated my plugins, got on the admin and then…bam! A white screen suddenly greeted me.

I thought it was just a temporary issue until i realized i can’t get into the admin area. Like the blue screen of death in Windows….except it was all white and no error.

After searching the wp forums and googling this problem- wordpress 2.8 upgrade blank screen problem - i found out that i wasn’t the only one facing this issue.

Some guys managed to fix this and some others ended up completely removing their wp folder and trying a new installation only to get the same black screen back.

Steps i took to solve this and failed:

I tried disabling all the plugins via my sql, renamed the pluings folder, renamed the themes folder, changed the memory to 64M on wp-settings.php, dropped tables in sql i thought might be the cause, deleted plugins i thought might be problematic,  downgrade wp via ftp back to 2.7… Nada!

Oh, the horror!

Steps i took to solve this and made it:

At 3 am, while still cracking up my head,  i remembered about a nasty issue i once had at work with a database and the only way i could fix it was to call the one person who could do that. The guy with fill access to the database and more knowledge than i had.

So i went to sleep and this morning i called my host and had the technician restore my yesterday’s backup and i now have almost everything back. Thank you so very much!

Before you take the plunge into fixing this yourself – if you got the error and find no way out – try removing any of the following plugins via your ftp and try accessing again the admin:
– sem google analytics
– redirection
– wp stats
– wp supercache

If that doesn’t solve your issue and you really want all your files back, ask your hosting company to do a restore and that will get your blog back.

A note: After the restore, you can’t see your categories, or all your other options when publishing a new post. You can fix that by clicking on the Screen Options, top right, and check all the boxes.
Fixed!

Good luck with that!