How to Fix WordPress Blank Page Error on Leaving Comments

This is a guest post by Udegbunam Chukwudi of StrictlyOnlineBiz

God knows how many times I’ve got the wordpress blank page error after leaving comments on some blogs. Some days back I got an email from one of my readers complaining that he had left  two lengthy comments on my blog only to get a blank page after clicking the submit button.  Thus I set out to find a solution and finally I’m 99% sure I’ve found one.

My research revealed that in some cases the almighty and over-rated Akismet is to be blamed. One of the features of Akismet that helps it with it’s anti-spam capability is that it tends to monitor the time gap between when a web page or blog post loads and when a comment is subsequently submitted.

If the time gap is small, Akismet tags the comment as spam and either throws up a blank page or tags the comment as spam in your wordpress dashboard. In most cases it does both.

HOW TO FIX THIS ISSUE?

Simple, deactivate and uninstall Akismet.

Please note that I tried this method and the next day, my blog went loco with the permalinks misbehaving badly. Single posts kept throwing up 404 errors.  Reactivating Akismet and restoring a backup of my database seems to have saved my blog.

NOTE: I don’t know what Akismet had to do with this but I’m so NEVER going to be deactivating it again because at a point I felt I’d been hacked.

If you intend going this route, make sure comment moderation is enabled for each and every comment. Most especially if you manage a do-follow blog like I do.

Another fix I found making the rounds on the net is changing a little piece of code found in the comments.php file of your wordpress theme.

It is said that wordpress uses post ID to track which comments go with certain posts and if this post id is missing in a comment, the comment is lost or the commentator is redirected to a blank page.

The Trick:

Using CTRL + F, find:

<input type="hidden" name="comment_post_ID" value="<?php echo $id; ?>" />

in your comments.php file and change it to

<input type="hidden" name="comment_post_ID" value="<?php echo $post->ID; ?>" />

Save the file and you’re good to go…

NOTE: So far so good, by changing this tiny piece of code in the comments.php file, I’ve been able to save my commentators a whole lot of headache. Deactivating Akismet was certainly not an option for me.

I hope you will find this guide helpful whenever your blog will face such kind of problem.


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32 thoughts on “How to Fix WordPress Blank Page Error on Leaving Comments”

  4. I didn’t know this problem existed, but thanks for the solution to solve this errors problem! I’ll use it if I ever have that error on my blog. Thanks for sharing!

    1. Well I have seen that error few times when leaving comment on blogs like tylercruz etc. I think Akismet or some other spam protection plugin could be the reason for it.

  8. Thanks for the support guys. I’m still new to guest posting and so far my efforts have been appreciated.
    Another useful tip is when writing long comments always do on Notepad or MS Word so that afterwards you can just copy and paste in the comment.
    This way you still have your comment should you get the blank page error.
    Take care guys.
    .-= Udegbunam Chukwudi@Make Money Online Tips´s last blog ..How To Get A Visa or MasterCard In Nigeria =-.

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