Fixing a Drupal White Screen of Death without having access to the apache error log

Joeri Poesen //

When you get a white screen of death or a Server Error 500, the first thing you want to do is check your web server’s error log to see what exactly went wrong.

If you’re on shared hosting however, you might not have access to it. Fortunately there’s an easy solution:

  • first create a new empty log file:

    • create php_error_log.txt in your drupal root directory

  • chmod it to 666

  • then modify .htaccess:

  • add: php_value error_log path/to/your/site/php_error_log.txt

  • add: php_value log_errors 1

» hat tip: morbus