Many times we need to
deactivate WordPress plugins
because we have some type of problem and we cannot deactivate them using the WordPress control panel because it does not let us access or simply returns a blank or unanswered screen.
To
deactivate WordPress plugins in an emergency situation
there are two methods, one via FTP and another one modifying the database manually.
How to disable WordPress plugins via FTP?
You have to access FTP to the wp-content folder of our WordPress and once there what we do is rename the
plugins
folder by
plugins_temporal
.
With this we will have deactivated the plugins and we will try to access the administration area of "‹"‹our WordPress and when we are inside and access the plugins area we can see that WordPress returns an error for each inactive plugin with a message similar to the following:
The X plugin has been deactivated due to an error: The plugin file does not exist.
But by doing the above we will have managed to verify that the problem was given to us by a plugin and we can proceed to deactivate them definitely or one by one with the method that we will explain below of the database.
How to deactivate WordPress plugins by modifying the database with PhpMyAdmin?
The first thing is to access PhpMyAdmin, once inside we select the database of our wordpress blog and all the tables will be shown.
We select the
wp_options
table (the
wp_
prefix can change if when you installed WordPress you selected another name for the prefix).
Next we have to find in the column
option_name
the option
active_plugins
. For this we can navigate through the different pages that show us all the options or the fastest way is to click on the
option_name
column and it will be sorted in alphabetical order, and as our option
active_plugins
begins with a will appear from the first.
We will edit it in the row of
active_plugins
and something like this will appear:
a:3:{i:0;s:29:"gravityforms/gravityforms.php";i:1;s:24:"wordpress-seo/wp-seo.php";i:2;s:27:"wp-pagenavi/wp-pagenavi.php";}
What we have to do is (first save that text string in case we need to restore it later) edit that text string so that it looks like this:
a:0:{}
Save the changes by pressing the Continue button and that's it.
On the
WordPress codex
page are the original instructions in English.