[Solved] Pages appearing blank

[discosteve]

Hi - This is my first CMS Made Simple website and everything has been running smoothly up until now.  I've been adding content, viewing pages, etc. and then this morning some of my pages appeared blank.  The details on the issue are below - I tried to include all the necessary information, but please let me know if I'm leaving something out.

I'm running CMS Made Simple Version 1.5.3.  I'm using PHP 5.1.6 and MySQL 5.0.68.  The Server Software is Apache/2.0.0 (CentOS) and the Server Operating System is Linux 2.6.9-78.0.13.ELsmp On i686.

All of the pages from two specific templates (let's call them Template 1 and Template 2) started showing up completely blank - just a white page in the browser.  There is no code or content on the page of any kind.  When I use the page preview function in CMS Made Simple, it also appears as a blank page.

A few of the pages from another template (we'll call it Template 3) were showing up with the shell of the page, but none of the content was showing up - the content block itself, and the menus (I'm using Menu Manager 1.5.3) weren't being pulled in at all.  This is only occurring with 3 pages that are using Template 3 - 18 other pages that are using Template 3 are showing up just fine.  When I view these pages in the page preview function in CMS Made Simple, the page appears just fine.

I found a similar post on this forum that suggested it might be due to a space issue on the web server and I realized that I had recently added a bunch of photos to the site, so I went back and deleted them all.  Once I deleted them, the pages using Template 1 started showing up again, but the pages from Template 2 were still completely blank and the pages from Template 3 still had blank content areas.  I cut all the code out of Template 2, pasted it back into the template, and hit Apply, them those pages started showing up again.  I've tried the same thing with Template 3, but have had no luck.

Any idea why these pages would go blank all of a sudden while the rest of the pages are showing up fine?  Any idea of how I could resolve the issue?

Thanks!  Your help is much appreciated.

[alby]

Check in wiki FAQ for active debug in config.php and look in your server logs for other error infos
Probably you have memory_limit problem

Alby

[discosteve]

Thanks so much for your quick reply.  I enabled debug mode in my config.php file, and when I did that, all the pages showed up perfectly.  I looked through the debug information at the bottom of the page and no errors were listed.  Being confused, I went back and disabled debug mode in the config.php file and the pages are still showing up fine even though the file is back to it's original condition.

I took a look at the server log files and there is an error message from earlier when the pages were showing up blank that says PHP Parse error:  syntax error, unexpected $end, expecting T_STRING or T_VARIABLE or '{' or '$' and it references one of the templates that were showing up completely blank.  So that would explain why those pages were showing up blank, but it's strange because I didn't make any changes to the template that it mentions.

There are no error messages in the server logs that mention the other pages that weren't working - the ones with blank content areas - and there are no messages about memory limit.  If I get the same problem on those pages again, I'll make sure to enable debug in config.php and see if it gives me any good info.

Any idea why editing the config.php and then changing it back to it's original condition would make a difference?  If it is a memory limit problem, is that something that my web host has to increase?

Thanks again!

[alby]

Any idea why editing the config.php and then changing it back to it's original condition would make a difference?  If it is a memory limit problem, is that something that my web host has to increase?

debug=true force template compile and writing (no smarty caching)
Check your system memory limit in System Information

Alby

[discosteve]

Got it.  There are a few items in the System Information that have the yellow caution symbol instead of the green checkmark and memory_limit is one of them.  Here's the info:

PHP Effective Memory Limit (memory_limit): 16M
Maximum Execution Time (max_execution_time): 30
Maximum Post Size (post_max_size): 8M
Maximum Upload Size (upload_max_filesize): 2M

So I'm guessing that the memory_limit might be to blame?  Is that something I can modify?

Thanks for your help!

[alby]

Got it.  There are a few items in the System Information that have the yellow caution symbol instead of the green checkmark and memory_limit is one of them.  Here's the info:

PHP Effective Memory Limit (memory_limit): 16M
Maximum Execution Time (max_execution_time): 30
Maximum Post Size (post_max_size): 8M
Maximum Upload Size (upload_max_filesize): 2M

So I'm guessing that the memory_limit might be to blame?  Is that something I can modify?

Thanks for your help!

Try to set in config.php (first param) with 32M and look in System Information if change

Alby

[discosteve]

Great!  I made the change in config.php and now the System Information is showing the memory_limit to be 32M.

As a side note - should I worry about the rest of those items (max_execution_time, post_max_size, and upload_max_size)?  I tried to change the config.php file where it says $config['max_upload_size'] = 2000000; to $config['max_upload_size'] = 10000000; but it didn't seem to change anything in System Information.  The rest of the the items I don't see how to change them - maybe they are set by the web host?

Thanks!

[alby]

The rest of the the items I don't see how to change them - maybe they are set by the web host?

Yes, maybe you can change with an .htaccess or ini_set (depend from configuration of your provider)
Search for htaccess and ini_set in forum

Alby

[discosteve]

Great - thanks again for your help.  It's much appreciated.