The White Screen of Death

October 6, 2025 

On Saturday, I installed a WordPress plugin that caused the W♥M website to crash and burn. I got that dreaded so-called WordPress’ “White Screen of Death” and I knew it was because of the plugin. I tried to remove the plugin via the admin plugin panel, nothing worked. I just could not delete the plugin.

I requested help from WordPress, and the tech support I got was an AI. The robot was no help and said I need to talk to a human (which it requested someone to take a look at my case). I waited 12 hours, but the human help never came.

I couldn’t sit around doing nothing, so I tried looking online for help. I tried everything, but nothing worked, because I didn’t have the Business Account that would allow me to SSH and remove the horrible plugin.

Eventually I figured it out. This was how I was able to fix my website:

Danger Zone: Reset Site

STEP 1: Make a complete back up of the entire website using Jetpack VaultPress Backup (this service is part of WordPress). This might take a few minutes or hours, depending on the size of your website.

STEP 2: Once you have the site backed up, go to wordpress.com/sites/(yourwebsiteurl)/settings and click on “Reset Site”. It will ask you to confirm by having you type in the website’s url. This will nuke everything (destroying all the posts and images, and importantly the plugins).

STEP 3: After the reset, you can go back to the Jetpack VaultPress Backup and restore from your backup. You’ll select everything EXCEPT PLUGINS. Do not restore the plugins. This might take a while, depending on the size of your website.

STEP 4: Everything should be working fine now, obviously you don’t have any plugins… so you’ll need to re-add in the plugins that you need and that worked before. Going forward, do not install any plugin that isn’t compatible with the current PHP.

NOTE: After resetting, you may have to re-log into your website. The easiest way to do this is to go to Wordpress.com and have them email you a login link (for some reasons my correct password never works).

Some thoughts on this whole disaster: I’m surprised how dangerous some plugins are. I’m also surprised how easily it was to just destroy a website with just a plugin. And it’s weird how WordPress didn’t warn you or had some sort of automatic reset to a previous state (like an autosave for the website before installation).

Another learning lesson is that WordPress’ tech support is atrocious. You can’t get any help, and the steps I wrote above - that wasn’t even a suggestion from the robot. It didn’t even tell me to back up the website! I had to think put these theories to test… and, boy, was I nervous about resetting the website. What if it didn’t work? What if I lost 10k posts? Yeah, I was scared to do it.

Of course, after restoring the website, minus the plugins, in hindsight, I should have done this much sooner. You can’t rely on WordPress’ tech support, because there are none. If you’re having similar problems, I suggest trying to fix it yourself. Going forward, I’ll regularly make backup (maybe even download it offline just in case).

Sep 21, 2025 | 06:13:47 PM

I don't know why I thought it was a good idea, but I've decided to create www.weheartmusic.com for fun.  This website only works if you put www before weheartmusic.com ... otherwise, if you don't put in the www, it will automatically mirrors to wheartm.com.   

I'm not entirely sure what I'll be doing with this page, maybe just behind-the-scenes updates or just personal thoughts? 

September 21, 2025

Are you a WordPress Block user and would like to use some of my methods for incorporating our format in your posts? You can obviously modify it for your usage.

I like to have a sidebar that floats to the right. This requires a little coding, as I don’t really know how to do this in visual block editor. I’m sure there is a way to create multiple blocks within blocks, but that actually sounds more complicated than my method.

The reason why I’m putting together this step-by-step guide is because I had to quickly learn and understand Block Editor in just a few days. I needed it to format and look a certain way, and so I came up with this solution and would like to pass along this knowledge.

Step 1: In List View, create a “Classic” block. This should be the first item, so if you created the Classic block later in the list, move it to the top. The reason for this is that the Classic block will float right (or left should you choose to modify the source code).

Step 2: Click on VIEW in the Classic editor and chose “<> Source Code”.

Step 3: Copy and paste this code into the source code window:

<div style="border-left: 1px solid #949e32; float: right; padding-left: 20px; margin-left: 20px; width:320px;">

Insert Image Here

<div style="float: none; position: relative; margin-top:-35px; text-align: center; text-shadow: 1px 1px 2px black, 0 0 2em black, 0em 0em .2em black; padding: 2px 6px; color: white; font-size:10px; font-weight:normal;">Caption Here</div> <p>&nbsp;</p> </div>

Step 4: Next, click on Paragraph under List View and start writing your first paragraph. In Block Editor, they want you write in different paragraph blocks, so this way you can move paragraph blocks around or insert images or other elements between the various blocks.

Step 5: Speaking of images, if you have more than one photo, I like to use TITLED GALLERY. Add another block and search for gallery. This will bring up some options – find “Titled Gallery” and then upload or choose your photos from your media folder. This will automatically put your images in a nice mosaic gallery. I think it looks fantastic. It’s very fast and efficient. This is something I used to do by hand (by eyeball), so seeing it instantly is pretty impressive.

P.S. Understanding the code: This is simply a division (<DIV>) that tells the browser what to do. The first item tells the browser to draw a left border of color #949e32 (light green). The next item tells the browser to float to the right, then pad it with 20 pixels and the whole width should only be 320 pixels.

The next Division is the caption, which I’ll summarize as white text with drop-shadows. Look for margin-top as negative 35. That means the caption, normally at 0 will now move 35 pixels above – so it will appear that the text is floating over the image.

September 20, 2025 

Since September 1st, I have been really busy backing up the TypePad website, month by month… starting in August 2025 and working backward to January 2007. With everyone also backing up, they knocked the host offline for a few days, so I was worried for a while about getting all my data off of TypePad. It’s all fixed now, so as of a few days ago, I’ve grabbed all the pages and their thumbnails (displayed images). The next step is to drill down and download all the full images… which might not be possible, given the short time frame. We only have a few weeks before they pull the plug.

Missing Contents
I discovered that we’re missing some contents from 2007 to 2012. That’s a problem. I’ve been re-adding and back-dating the posts. Unfortunately, WordPress is treating these old articles as new, so you may get newsletter and alerts if you subscribe through the email service.

Hopefully in a few days, I’ll be re-adding in all Dave’s Jazz Note series, in the meantime you can browse through the published posts.

The other problem that is keeping me busy is that WordPress has its own rules, so all our TypePad articles are not properly formatted and looks terrible. What I’ve been doing is manually updating page by page, and this is a painstaking process.

Moving Domain
The original domain name, weheartmusic.com should now automatically be mirrored to wheartm.com. I didn’t realize that when I moved the domain, I also had to re-add instructions for the MX records (for our email service). Then services like BlueSky requires a domain CNAME for their product… Next time, I’ll make a note to back up all the DNS records before moving.

At the same time, I am annoyed that all the DNS records didn’t just automatically be forwarded to the new Domain service. That’s something seemingly simple that they could have done for less headaches for me.

Search Engines
For the last few years, we’ve been enjoying very high ranking with Google, in the news department, in the images department, etc. The last data that Google sent me was that we were getting 2.4 million “Impressions” (like when you search for something, our content shows up). But only about 4,000 click through.

Unfortunately, with a brand-new website, since August 28th, we’re starting at ground zero as far as Google ranking is concerned. In a recent search, wheartm didn’t even show up until page 12… so we have a long way to go.

I’m willing to give anything a try, so I’ve installed Yoast, which will try and help us format our content for “Search Engine Optimization” (SEO). Of course, it hates how we format our posts, with images floating to the right or setlists and other data on a sidebar. They claim it makes it hard to read. I’ll keep it in mind, but right now ignoring their suggestions. The best part about the Yoast is that they’ve allowed us to give alternate names, for example “We Heart Music” and “weheartmusic” as alternate names.

Speaking of Google, we’ve submitted wheartm.com, and based on our 10,000 pages, Google said it will take time to index everything so it can serve up relevant searches. But it’s going to take time. We’re only officially 20 days old. I’ve also submitted to Bing. Not sure if there are other search engines we should look at?

Socials
I’m not one for being on social media, but you have to go where the people are. Since we’re starting fresh, we have to make our presence known by using social media to share links to our website and help build up an audience. Our social links are as follows: Twitter, Instagram, BlueSky, and Facebook.

Anyway, that’s all I have to say for now.

Read more Site Update.

September 6, 2025 

I have to take an unexpected break from download and backing up the old website on TypePad. So far, what I’ve only downloaded the years 2017 to 2025 (up to August 2025). I still have about 10 years of content left to go, but since yesterday, TypePad went offline. I think it’s been over 24 hours of downtime now. I don’t really blame TypePad for not fixing the problem right away… after all, they probably all learned they didn’t have a job at the end of the month. Naturally some may have quit or not shown up to work, etc.

Right now, the priority is WordPress, and the more I work on this current website (wheartm.com), the more I am understanding how it works. Who knows, maybe one day, I’ll be an expert.

So here are some behind-the-scenes updates that you may not be aware of.

Events

Event listings will now include a copy of the preview. The preview may or may not have been published yet, due to scheduling grouping. Example is Dogs in a Pile show event is listed, but the article won’t be published until I finalize the other entries.

Also, at the bottom of the page, you can the venue’s information, such as address and maps and phone number.

Banner
We finally got a banner… it’s a background image with a dark tint. We have the option to upload multiple banners and have it randomly appear on the page. That’s something to consider for the future.

Socials
On the very top-right corner of the front page, you can see social links. I believe the social icons will also appear if you scroll to the bottom of the page.

Subscribe
There is also a ‘Subscribe’ button. If you’re not already logged in, you can also put in your email address and automatically get our content delivered to your inbox… if that is your preferred way of reading.

WordPress also offer an RSS reader, so you can also add us to your reader feed. Kind of neat, I didn’t realize WordPress was so robust when it comes to feeding content to readers.

Plugins
The two plugins I’m using is the Events that is very good for a free plugin. I wanted to buy the ‘Pro’ version, but it turns out you can’t just buy it – you have to subscribe and it auto renews at $150 a year. It’s a shame, but I won’t pay for a subscription.

The other plugin I recently tried out is a Tables (like Excel) that you can insert into a post. I recently used it in The Next Generation PC Handheld and it looks pretty good. You can sort it on the fly, and the best part is that it contains an image with the line entry. As more PC Handhelds enters the market, I will update the database so you can visually see and compare the various devices.

If you know of a good plugin, please reach out and let me know. I’d like to try it out… and if it’s useful, I will incorporate it in the website.

Related
“Related” posts will automatically appear at the bottom of each page. This is done through context and word matches. For example, for this page, you may see other “Site Update” posts. I don’t have any control of what is served up, but it’s a better (and modern) way of showing previous entries. I used to have to handcraft this… and in some ways I kind of miss doing that (simply because I can choose what to excerpt).

Meet the Team
I have quickly drawn four cartoon animals to be included on Meet the Team – but I do not like the plugin… so I may deactivate it but still re-use the vuart for a future plugin.

Update: As of 9/6/2025 TypePad is back online. I am resuming downloading backup for the year 2016 and working backwards.

September 1, 2025 

I’ve been busy updating the We Heart Music About Page (which you can access on the very top menu, next to Contact, on the front page). It’s kind of fun to take a drive down memory lane. As you can see from the timeline, there’s been a lot of changes since 2007. I wish I had taken more screen shots at random times, rather than just waiting for an event to trigger a manual snapshot.

Speaking of change, I need to change with the times and let WordPress do more of the heavy lifting as far as formatting and layouts.  As you can see, I still rely on putting together every page by hand.  

HISTORY

• January 2007: Vox.com was a free blogging service, opened to the public in October 2006. I started playing around with it with a music website (successlessness.vox.com). The first entry for Harry Chapin on Thursday, 25 January 2007 at 07:55 PM

• February 2007: Quite a few friends and music lovers came aboard to help write, including early contributors by Cristina, Ryan, Gus, Randy, Celeste, Jamie, Adina, Minh, Melinda, Mads, Brody, Kristine, and Troy. There was also an anonymous contributor.

• March 2007: We originally wanted to call it We Love Music, but due to copyright, trademarks, and domain registry, we came up with We Heart Music (aka We<3Music, We♥Music, W♥M). The name was suggested by Ryan. It was the best thing for branding.

• September 2010: Vox eventually folded and we were migrated to Typepad.com, where we remained grandfathered in with Vox’s original promise.

• January 2020: John moves to Kansas City

• October 2020: Typepad stopped accepting new customers. We were worried, but thought it was only temporary, due to the pandemic.

• November 2024: Vu moves to Jacksonville, Dave and Thaddeus are now in charge of Minneapolis

• March 2025: Explored options to migrate the website to WordPress, only as a backup plan.

• August 27, 2025: Typepad announced it would shut down on September 30, 2025

• August 28, 2025: Executed backup plan, setup wheartm.com.

• September 1, 2025: Ultrawide support for wheartm.com!

• September 30, 2025: End of life for TypePad

Vu’s WordPress Diary

08/28/2025: I have decided WordPress is our future home. Granted, it wasn’t my number one choice. I have also previously expressed that I don’t understand the way WP works and that it doesn’t allow pre-formatting and custom layouts. Let me tell you, it was a real struggle to get things up and running, and even now I’m not quite happy with the way it looks.

08/29/2025: Now that we’re settling in on WordPress, their compose editor, called Gutenberg, was a total shocker to me. It was so new and different than what I understand of a compose window that I gave up on it immediately, and deactivated it in favor of the Classic Editor. Although Gutenberg is definitely not something for me, I do recognize that many people love this new “block” approach to writing and composing.  The theme we’re using is called CoverNews, by AF Themes. It looks like what you would expect with an online modern blog or magazine-style. Personally, I think it looks too busy, but this is what modern looks like.

09/01/2025: It’s day four working and understanding WordPress. I think I am getting the hang of it, but I’ve got a long road to go, because 99% of our formatted TypePad posts need to be reformatted to better display and read on WP. I’ve previously mentioned that WP has rules and behaves differently than TypePad or Movable Type (incidentally, I just looked up Movable Type – they have over 80% market share in Japan!). Right now I’m pretty happy with the ultrawide support for the website.  It will also scale based on your screen (so you can view it on your phone).

August 30, 2025 

As someone who builds websites by hand-coding for nearly the last 30 years, I don’t mind a little manual coding when I compose in TypePad. I actually find it easier than using the TypePad’s “WYSIWYG” (What You See Is What You Get) editor, and just prefer the straight up code editor for full control over formatting and layouts.

When TypePad announced their closure a few days ago, we were scrambling to move our contents over to WordPress. To be fair, the plan was always to move to something modern, because we saw the writings on the wall with TypePad, when the platform stopped accepting new accounts during the pandemic (in 2020). When it seemed like this wasn’t a temporary thing, we started exploring alternative options, starting in early 2025.

Now that we’re settling in on WordPress, their compose editor, called Gutenberg, was a total shocker to me. It was a struggle to understand it. It was so new and different than what I understand of a compose window that I gave up on it immediately, and deactivated it in favor of the Classic Editor.

Although Gutenberg is definitely not something for me, I do recognize that many people love this new “block” approach to writing and composing. Each block does something different. For example, the default block is paragraph (text). If you want to add an image, you can drop in an image block, etc. Please watch the video below, it has an overview of block-writing.

Gutenberg was introduced in December 2018, so WordPress users have been using it for a long time now. Some people love it, some people hate it. To me, this was designed for new, younger writers, who writes and consume contents on iPad and large phones.

For now, I’ll be sticking to the Classic Editor. I’m pretty happy with getting wheartm.com up and running in less than 24 hours. The last two days was just me learning how everything works. So far, I’m pretty impressed with everything.

 Covernews

WordPress offers “1000s of Options” for themes on their website, but only a handful for the entry or free tier. Believe me, I’ve spent hours looking at all their free themes – they all suck.

Of course, you can always download third-party themes or pay for your own theme, but from my understanding, you need a Business Account, as per their FAQ.

This feature is available on sites with the WordPress.com Business and Commerce plans, and the legacy Pro plan. If you have a Business plan, make sure to activate it. For sites on the Free, Personal, and Premium plans, upgrade your plan to access this feature.

A business account is $25 a month vs $4 for the Personal account. As you can see, that’s a massive difference in pricing.

The theme we’re using is called CoverNews, by AF Themes. It looks like what you would expect with an online modern blog or magazine-style. Personally, I think it looks too busy, but this is what modern looks like. I would like some sort of reading option, and maybe there is something like that on WordPress?

Like many free themes, additional customizing features, such as typography style and colors, are locked behind a paid feature, which requires an annual subscription. If you want to download the theme, head over to afthemes.com and get the free version to check it out for yourself. The free version is actually very good.

P.S. This article was composed on Classic Editor (Code) for WordPress. It was writing exercise and an experiment in learning how to craft an article with images and formatting. It was to understand how WP interpret html codes. For example, WP will respect CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) but will ignore some older html markup. Once you understand its limitations, you can work around it to create and control your layouts without having to use their Block Editor.

August 28, 2025 

In the last 24 hours I’ve been very busy for me. As you may, or may not, know, TypePad, the blogging platform that we’ve been on since 2007, is shutting down on September 30, 2025.

We have nearly 20 years of content, so moving each entry, one-by-one, is time consuming, and is not really an option. My only option is to quickly scrape the website and “save all” on my local hard drive and then eventually formatting it for the future blogging home.

The next step is to find a new home, and after exploring some options, I have decided WordPress is our future home. Granted, it wasn’t my number one choice, but after trying to unsuccessfully pay for a German web host (it’s really hard to pay for something overseas due to strict consumer protection), I default to the USA option.

I have also previously expressed that I don’t understand the way WP works and that it doesn’t allow pre-formatting and custom layouts. Let me tell you, it was a real struggle to get things up and running, and even now I’m not quite happy with the way it looks.

The new home is now located at wheartm.com, and eventually weheartmusic.com will also reroute to the new home page.