Set up copy of live site on MAMP: Front end is blank page (white screen)

Hi,

I’m totally new to MODx and am just now inheriting a site. I thought I would play around with a copy of the live site on my development server (MAMP) as a way of familiarizing myself with the site and trying out modifications before doing them on the live site.

I have downloaded all the files, imported the database, and updated manager/includes/config.inc.php with my database connection details. I can access the manager just fine, but the front end of the site is all blank pages (a white screen).

Does anyone have an idea what I am missing or doing wrong? Some config variable I am overlooking?

My details:
PHP 5.2.6
MySQL 5.0.41
MODx 0.9.6.3

Mac 10.5.8
FireFox 3.0.14

What version of MODx?

Did you run install in upgrade mode (http://yoursite.com/install) ?

If not, try it.

MODx 0.9.6.3

I did try running the install in upgrade mode, but got the same result.

Try clearing the cache. Site->Clear Cache. There are paths in there that may be causing issues. The fact that you are accessing the Manager is a good sign. Also check your .htaccess file in webroot to see if there is a rewrite rule causing issues. Your path should be set to folder in your webroot if MODx is in a subdir.

Thanks for the response, smashingred.

I checked .htaccess earlier and there was nothing there except 301 redirects for some alternate domains, which didn’t look like anything that would interfere. I commented this out for good measure.

When I go to Site > Clear Cache I get this message:

0 documents were published.
0 documents were unpublished.
Cache: Found 5 files in cache directory and deleted 0 cache files.

New cache files will be created when pages are requested.

I’m still getting a white screen on the front-end. I made sure permissions for assets/cache were 777 just for good measure and tried to clear the cache again with no luck. But maybe I’m barking up the wrong tree.

Any more ideas? I appreciate you helping me troubleshoot this.

If you’re looking at your assets/cache directory via ftp are there any cache files? If so, make sure these are writable for MODx too.

Also MODx must be able to write to [tt]siteCache.idx.php[/tt] and [tt]sitePublishing.idx.php[/tt].

Greetz
JUSI

There are no cache files in assets/cache. Here are the contents:

index.html siteCache.idx copy.php sitePublishing.idx.php
rss siteCache.idx.php

I’m pretty stumped as to why the front end is showing up totally blank.

EDIT: Almost forgot to mention, these are all writeable.