WordPress Home Page Blank or White Due to Default HTML File after Migrating to New Web Host

I had a problem where WordPress had a blank or white home page after migrating from another host. The answer turned out to be that there was a “default.html” copied over that the old web host used, but the new one didn’t. And it was that file that was making the home page of WordPress blank or white, while the other pages worked just fine.

Answer/Solution: delete the default.html file in your root website’s directory that was copied over from the other host.

From AndreJ at WordPress Development at Stack Exchange, on the topic of “Migration issue – blog home page is blank“:

Sometimes when you are migrating your page you can get blank home page.
I found the problem with the home page not displaying from the base URL. it was because there was a default.html file in the root directory. The old hosting server must had set the order to look for start files to PHP extension as the first default so it ignored the default.html file in the root directory and loaded index.php.
The new hosting server must have the default extension it looks for as an .HTM or .HTML file and was loading the blank default.html file first. Once I deleted the blank default.html file the hosting server started loading the index.php file and displayed the WordPress home page.

Thanks, AndreJ!

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