I try and update WordPress as soon as I can… but sometimes…. sometimes… things go wrong.

Here’s what happened. I saw the “WordPress has a new update” notification message in the admin area and I thought to myself “self… I should do this”.

So I clicked the update link.

But without thinking I closed my browser tab.

I panicked.

I went to the front end of my website and I saw this…

I reloaded and I saw this…

That “brief” message never went away.

The website was completely down.

Front end, admin area… all gone.

WTF did I just do?

OMG.

DEEP BREATH…. let’s back this crazy train up for a second…

What Is Maintenance Mode?

Maintenance Mode (or MM for short) is a way for WordPress to install updates and not let visitors see all kinds of update errors that might occur if they visited the site during that process. Typically MM is only for a few seconds.. max a minute while things get updated.

But NOT when you close the WordPress update screen.

Oh no. Then it never goes away.

How To Turn Off Maintenance Mode

Thankfully when Maintenance Mode gets stuck and won’t go away this (typically) doesn’t do any damage to your database or WordPress installation. In fact, it comes down to one file. One stubborn file that usually goes away all by itself.

Here’s what you gotta do… FTP into the site and look on the root for a file named .maintenance and delete it.

BOOM! Your website is backup and you saved the day!

Your friend,

Amy “Oh, No… I Did It Again” Anderson

PS: Did I leave my flatiron plugged in? OMG! Gotta go back home now!