“Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance”
An update stopped halfway. Delete the .maintenance file, and check which update did not finish.
- You need
- FTP
- Updated
While WordPress updates plugins, themes or itself, it puts a file called .maintenance in the root folder and shows this message to visitors. When the update is done, WordPress deletes the file. If the message is still there, the update was interrupted before the file was deleted.
Wait ten minutes
The file holds a timestamp, and WordPress ignores the file once that timestamp is more than ten minutes old. Until then, the update may still be running. If the site is back after ten minutes, go on to check the update.
Delete the .maintenance file
If the message is still there, or you can't wait:
- Connect with FTP or the file manager in your hosting panel.
- Open the WordPress root folder, where
wp-config.phpis. - Delete the
.maintenancefile. If you can't see it, show hidden files. - Reload the site.
With WP-CLI, wp maintenance-mode deactivate does the same.
Check the update
Even if the site works once the file is gone, the update may be incomplete. Go to Dashboard → Updates and see whether anything is still listed as out of date. Update what is left, preferably one plugin at a time, so you can find the plugin that causes the problem.
If you get a critical error or a white screen after deleting the file, a plugin didn't finish updating. The line with PHP Fatal error in the error log shows which one. Rename that plugin's folder in wp-content/plugins to deactivate it, and then reinstall it.
Why the update stopped
These things can interrupt an update:
- The tab was closed, or the browser lost its connection during the update.
- Many plugins were updated at once, and the update ran longer than PHP allows.
- PHP ran out of memory during the update.
Update fewer plugins at a time, and back up the site first.
When you're stuck
If the site is still down once .maintenance is deleted and the plugins are off, the WordPress update itself may have stopped halfway. Then the core files have to be reinstalled, or the site restored from a backup.
To reinstall, download the version you were updating to from wordpress.org and upload wp-admin, wp-includes and the files in the root folder. Don't upload the wp-content folder. With WP-CLI, wp core download --version=<version> --skip-content --force does the same.