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A white page or a page with a 500 Internal Server Error is, in fact, either a .htaccess issue to a PHP fatal error in disguise.

First, let's see if it is a .htaccess issue. Try renaming the .htaccess file in your site's root to htaccess.bak If there is a .htaccess file in the site's administrator directory, try renaming it as well. If that solves the problem, the issue was with a directive in your .htaccess file. We'd like to recommend you to try removing directives from your .htaccess until you find the one which causes the problem.

If that doesn't help, the error you are receiving is in fact a PHP error in disguise. First, check your server's error logs (not the access logs) immediately after visiting the page which throws the error. There should be an exact description of the PHP fatal error which occurred. Sometimes you can find the error messages in files called error_log or error.log inside the site's root and/or administrator directories. If unsure about the error log location, please consult your host. Most likely the error logs are available in your site's cPanel, Plesk control panel or similar hosting account management facility.

If your host does not give you access to the error logs and you have access to the Joomla! administrator area, please log in to your site's back-end, go to Global Configuration, click on the Server tab and set the Error Reporting to Maximum (Joomla! 1.5) or Development (Joomla! 2.x and later). Try visiting the problem page again.

If you still get a blank page, edit your configuration.php file and put the following code right after the final closing curly brace ( this is what a curly brace looks like --> } ) but before the closing PHP tag (it looks like ?> that is a question mark and a greater-than sign):

ini_set( 'display_errors', true );
error_reporting( E_ALL ); 

Try visiting the problem page again.

If you still get a white page, please remote the two lines from your configuration.php file. Edit the .htaccess file in your site's root. If you don't have a file named .htaccess create a new one. Beware that htaccess.txt is a DIFFERENT FILE and will NOT work! Add the following to the end of the file:

php_flag display_errors On
php_value error_reporting 32767

and retry loading the problem page.

If you still get a white page, remove the two lines from your .htaccess file. Now, create a file called php.ini with the following content:

display_errors=on
error_reporting=E_ALL

and upload it into your site's root and your site's administrator directory. Retry loading the problem page.

If you still get a white page, delete the php.ini files your created and choose a different host. If your host doesn't allow you to debug any PHP-related issues there is no point paying them.

Please note that if you can not understand what the PHP error message means, just copy and paste it here verbatim so that we can take a look and point you to the right direction.

You tried to restore your site on top of a site which was based on a different Joomla! version family, e.g. a Joomla! 2.5 site on top of a Joomla! 1.5 site. Please try deleting all files and folders and run the transfer again.

OK, let's do something much simpler.

Take a regular backup of your site. Download the backup to your local computer. Extract it using Akeeba eXtract Wizard. Remove the fiels and folders from the new site. Upload the extracted files. Access the restoration script as http://www.example.com/installation/index.php where www.example.com is the domain name of your new site.

Make sure you ARE NOT using the Site Tranfer Wizard backup profile. You need to use your regular backup profile.

Hold on a minute! There is plenty of documentation. What you will need is:

• Quick Start Guide. It explains step by step how to backup and restore your site. It is available in PDF format from the Download page and online at https://www.akeebabackup.com/documentation/troubleshooter.html. Links to it are found in the installation page of Akeeba Backup, in Akeeba Backup itself and in the User's Guide.
• Troubleshooter. It has instructions for helping yourself if you have a problem. Links to it can be found in the installation page of Akeeba Backup as well as each and every error page in Akeeba Backup, Kickstart and Akeeba Backup Installer. It's the first thing you see when you click on the Docs link on our site, labelled "Troubleshooter - START HERE". Links to related articles in the troubleshooter are also shown whenever you submit a ticket. It is only available online at https://www.akeebabackup.com/documentation/troubleshooter.html
• Videos. I would actually recommend starting there. Click on the Videos link at the top of the page. Watch the third and fourth videos (those with a name starting with AB03 and AB04) to see how you can download the backup archive (AB03) and how you can restore it (AB04). It's faster than reading the documentation. It has helped many people before you :)

If you prefer reading to watching videos, no problem! We've got you covered. Start with the troubleshooter.

You said you can't download the backup archive. There's a troubleshooter article called "Where are my Akeeba Backup backup archive files and how can I download them?".

As to how you restore the backup, there's a troubleshooter article called "How do I restore a backup and where do I find information about Kickstart?". That's a good place to start. It even gives you links to the videos which are available from the aptly named "Videos" link in the top of each page of our site. BTW, the link to these instructions can also be found at the top of the Administer Backup Files page in a distinctive box with a light blue background, assuming that you are using Akeeba Backup 3.6.x and Joomla! 2.5.x.

If you have a post-restoration issue with your restored site, there's an entire section in troubleshooter called "Troubleshooting issues after restoring your site / issues on your restored site". A link to it is also printed in recent versions of the Akeeba Backup Installer restoration script which is used by all backup types, no matter if you perform the restoration using Kickstart, the integrated restoration feature of Akeeba Backup, a semi-manual restoration using Akeeba eXtract Wizard or perform a site transfer with the Site Transfer Wizard.

I would understand it if you told me that there's a lot of documentation and I would counter-argue that there are so many potential issues with server configurations that I have to provide this kind of very detailed documentation to cover it all. But telling me that there is no documentation to go through? Come on! I've practically written a small encyclopaedia and put it on-line for everyone to read it :)