Check your webserver error log
Usually, this indicates that a PHP error has occurred and the message has been sent to your web server or system log file. Check there – e.g. /var/log/apache/error.log, although the exact location will depend on your server configuration – for further details.
Check your file permissions
If you haven’t installed OJS yet, then the most likely cause is a problem with file permissions in your cache/ or cache/t_compile directories. See docs/README for information on file permissions.
Further troubleshooting
If you don’t have access to your server log file, you can try adding the following near the top of index.php to cause error messages to be sent to the browser:
ini_set('display_errors', E_ALL);
If you happen to be running in a Windows IIS environment, you may also have to enable fastcgi.impersonate=1 in your php.ini file.
You may also want to temporarily modify (approximately) line 27 of file lib/pkp/includes/functions.inc.php, removing the @ operator, so it would look like this:
if((include_once BASE_SYS_DIR.'/'.$filePath) === false) {
Remember to revert that change afterwards.
Sometimes a specific PHP script included in the software will fail to execute without any error message, e.g. due to a broken modification or a file permissions problem. To determine which script might be causing the problem, you can edit your lib/pkp/includes/functions.inc.php and find the following line:
function import($class) {
Add below it:
echo "Importing " . $class . " \n";
This will cause OJS to list class files before importing them (for ANY viewer of the site). If you are having a problem with a particular file, it will be the last one listed. Double-check the file permissions on it and try running it through the PHP linter (php -l path/to/file.inc.php).
Be sure to revert this change when you are finished.