Often times during troubleshooting, many sites will recommend deactivate all plugins and activate them one by one. What’s worst is sometimes you get locked out of your WordPress admin panel, so you can’t even deactivate the plugins in an easy way. If you have ever faced the white screen of death, then you know exactly what we are talking about. In this article, we will show you how to deactivate all WordPress plugins when not able to access wp-admin area.
There are two methods to disabling your plugins. One requires you to use FTP, and the other requires you to use phpMyAdmin.
Deactivate All Plugins Using FTP
In this method, you will need to either use FTP, or your host’s file manager. Navigate to the /wp-content/ folder. You will see a folder called plugins. Rename the plugins folder to anything that you like. In our example, we will call it “plugins.deactivate”. Once you do this, all of your plugins will be deactivated.
Most of the time when you do this, you are usually locked out of your admin panel. If the issue was with your plugins, you should be able login to your /wp-admin/. Once you do that, go back to your /wp-content/ directory and rename “plugins.deactivate” back to plugins. Now you can activate one plugin at a time until your site breaks again. At which point, you will know exactly which plugin caused the issue.
Deactivate all plugins using phpMyAdmin
The FTP method is definitely easier in our opinion, however you can also deactivate all plugins using phpMyAdmin. If you don’t know how to get to phpMyAdmin, then we recommend using the FTP method above.
In your WordPress database, go in the wp_options table. Locate the option name “active_plugins”. Now edit the value of that option and change it to this: a:0:{}
We hope that this article helps you deactivate all plugins in a fairly easy way.
Disabling the plugins has resolved the white screen on the front end but I’m still getting white screen on /wp-admin. Any ideas how to fix this as i can’t log in to the admin panel now
Great post. Naturally, if you are using a security plug (that rewrites your .htaccess file for example) you might want to keep a bare WordPress .htaccess file handy, too – and upload that to the root dir. You can get a copy of the standard .htaccess file from the root of any virgin WP install. Just keep it handy for lockouts generally… As you were.
I held my breath longer than a deepsea diver as I followed your instructions. It requires a degree of confidence and trust. For others, my problem was a plug-in which froze on activation, before getting the white screen treatment. I followed teh instructions about looking for wp-content, then to deactivate plug-ins. However, I decided just to delete the last plug-in only, and that did the trick! Thanks for providing such a ‘saver’!
It worked thanks a lot.
It works !!
THANK YOU my WordPress risen.
I deactivated all my plugins and themes except WP default theme, but the screen is still white and I cannot get to wp-admin.
Not sure why that is happening then.
It worked!! Thanks a lot friend!! It worked and you have saved me!!
Your post SAVED ME….
Twice!!!
Thanks so much for writing this you don’t know how many hours of pain you saved me. Both times I had the problem I was able to resolve it in 10 minutes using your post instructions.
Roger
Thank you for your articles on how to fix WordPress when something goes wrong.
I’m somewhat new to WordPress and so far i have been not able to access my admin panel twice and both times it took me months to fix. The last time I couldn’t fix it so I just removed WordPress from my domain and started all over. I had to have my domain host help me get everything off so that I could start over. Extreme way to correct a problem but with low tech knowledge it was what I had to do. Good thing that I’m persistant as I would have given up blogging a long time ago. It’s my joy in writing that keeps me going.
Thanks again for your site.
You are helping people worldwide. USA for me. Lee
Very handy tip if you get the white screen of death and not sure what caused it. Thanks
Recently i also suffered from a problem caused from a newly activated plugin and i think this post should have come before few days
Very informative and a must known thing!!
Thanks for the Post