Tag Archives: Maintenance Mode

WordPress Stuck in Maintenance Mode

Working on a new project recently with some custom plugins and the likes has caused a few shall we say glitches. A recent upgrade crashed half way through, well the database locked erroneously resulting in the website being stuck in “maintenance mode”.

DANGER, DANGER, RED ALERT!

Maintenance Mode

Maintenance Mode

Don’t panic, this is very very easy to solve…

A file called .maintenance (notice the . at the start) is created automatically by WordPress whenever you update WordPress, Themes or Plugins. This is created to effectively shut WordPress down so it can update cleanly. Once the update is completed successfully the .maintenance file is normally deleted.

There is a small obstacle, its IMPOSSIBLE to delete it via the wordpress admin (wp-admin) area of your website. You will need to access it via your web hosts file manager or via FTP.

HOW TO ACCESS THE FILE MANAGER

File Manager Options

File Manager Options

I use cPanel so the following steps will be done using that, and since its the most popular admin panel, the odds are high you’ll be using that too.

  1. Login to your host cPanel control panel.
  2. Scroll down the page to where it says File Manager and click it.
  3. When the Option Box (right) pops up, be sure select “Web Root” and next tick “Show Hidden Files (dotfiles)”.
  4. Scroll down to find the .maintenance file, it will usually be next to .htaccess, which is often the first file after the folders.
    *Be sure to note the .(DOT) before .maintenance.
  5. Select the file so its highlighted and hit Delete (Big red X).

How simple were that ?

 Alternative Methods via FTP

It can be done via FTP but that often needs a 3rd party application install, and configuring, using your web hosts control panel is something almost all website owners have access too.