Before WordPress sends out the resulting page, a lot of things happen in the background, inside the server. And something seems to stop the server from fulfilling the request from the visitor.
In this case, there’s a good chance to find the problem by activating debug mode in WordPress.
Connect to your server via ftp and download the file wp-config.php find the row:
define('WP_DEBUG', false); and change false to true. Now, upload the file back to the server and try again to load the page. Most probably, you’ll see some error (and possibly some warnings, too). The error information may point direct at the root problem, or may be a side-effect, but it’s usually a very good clue about what needs to be fixed.
Don’t forget to turn off debugging when you’re done. Occasional warnings may offset the design of the received pages or might fire before the server has started the output, breaking the possibility to correctly form the http response header.
If the exercise above doesn’t help, you may try:
- Temporarily changing to a standard theme, like twenty seventeen. Do this by making sure that twentyseventeen is present in the folder wp-content/themes and renaming the folder of your current theme.
- Disabling one or several plugins until you find the issue. Since your website doesn’t load correctly, this can be done by temporarily renaming the folder name of each plugin via ftp. (You might add “-renamed” to the plugin folder name, for instance, and then try to load the web site again in your browser.) Once you get in to your site again: rename back those plugins that work, and activate them again in the admin area.
(If you’re lucky to have deeper access to your web server, some of these tasks may be easier accomplished via wp-cli, but in shared hosting, this is usually not the case.)
Let me know how you get along.
