It’s so important for the security of your entire blog that you keep your plugins up to date!
Any experience blogger will always insist that you need to backup your site before updating any themes or plugins – and I recommend it, too!
However, we are all human.
Sometimes we forget to back up first, sometimes we think “it’s just one update it’s fiiine” – or maybe you just hadn’t encountered any issues before so thought you didn’t need to backup.
No matter the case, your heart is likely to sink when you see that horrifying white screen on your site.
Don’t stress! We can fix this, we’ll fix this. Let’s go!
Removing the Faulty Plugin
Before we can fix the issue, we need to disable the plugin to get your website functional again.
Method #1: Disable Plugin from WordPress Admin
If a plugin update wreaked some havoc on your public-facing blog, but you can still login to your WordPress Admin Dashboard – you’re lucky. This will be the simplest route to fix.
Log in to your Admin Dashboard, and navigate to Plugins > Installed Plugins. Locate the recently updated plugin and click Deactivate.
If you were sure this was the plugin causing the issue, you should be good to go! If the issue hasn’t resolved, it may be a different plugin causing the issue.
Method #2: Disable Plugin from WordPress Toolkit
If you installed WordPress using the cPanel tool called “WordPress Toolkit,” you can actually manage themes & plugins directly from cPanel, without logging in to WordPress.
If you don’t have access to your WordPress Dashboard anymore, that’s okay!
Your web host should have provided you access to cPanel. Login to your cPanel and navigate to WordPress Toolkit.
Expand the section with the appropriate WordPress installation, and click the Plugins sub section.
Under the “State” column, just toggle the appropriate plugin off.
Method #3: Disable Plugin from cPanel File Manager
Without access to your WordPress Admin Dashboard, and without WordPress Toolkit, we can disable the plugin directly from your server.
Login to your cPanel and navigate to File Manager.
From here, you’ll have to locate your plugins folder. The most common path to locate it would be public_html > wp-content > plugins.
Here you will find a folder for each plugin you have installed.
Select the appropriate folder and click Rename. Add a “~” at the end of the folder name. (you can really rename the folder in any way, this is just my personal preference)
Now see if you can login to your WordPress admin. You may need to clear your browser cache. You may come across an error similar to below:
And that’s fine! That’s what you wanted. Now you can navigate to Plugins > Installed Plugins to safely delete the plugin.
Method #4: Disable All Plugins from cPanel File Manager
You may have no idea which plugin broke your website. In this case, the best route is to shut them all down, and turn them back on one at a time until it breaks again.
We’ll have to navigate to our File Manager again as we did above – in case you skipped it, I’ll repeat.
Login to your cPanel and navigate to File Manager.
From here, you’ll have to locate your plugins folder. The most common path to locate it would be public_html > wp-content > plugins.
Select the plugins folder and click Rename. Add a “~” at the end of the folder name. (you can really rename the folder in any way, this is just my personal preference)
Now login to your WordPress Admin Dashboard. You may see some errors letting you know plugins can’t be found.
Now go back to your File Manager in cPanel, and rename the folder back to plugins.
This will disable all of your plugins.
In your WordPress Admin Dashboard, navigate to Plugins > Installed Plugins and start re-activating your plugins one at a time.
If your website crashes again when you flip one on, you’ve found the culprit! Turn that plugin back off and remove it with Method #3 above.
Fixing the Issue
So you’ve switched off or deleted the plugin, now what?! Try re-installing the plugin manually.
Head over to WordPress.org’s Plugin repository and do a search for the plugin in question.
Click the appropriate plugin and then Download it to your computer.
Login to your cPanel and navigate to File Manager. Locate the plugins folder (like something like public_html > wp-content > plugins).
Upload the zip file to the plugins folder.
Select the newly uploaded zip file, and click Extract.
Now you can Delete the zip file, once it has extracted.
Now head back to your WordPress Admin Dashboard, navigate to Plugins > Installed Plugins and you should see the plugin listed, activate it and you should be good to go!
If this still breaks your website, contact the developer to let them know of the issue. It’s helpful if you provide details of the steps you’ve taken, and any error messages you get.
