When You Are Stuck in Maintenance Mode

Ever tried an update, often for a plugin, on your WordPress site and the “Briefly unavailable for maintenance” page is not brief?

I will spare you the uninteresting details of why you’re stuck, 50% because boring and 50% because don’t completely understand.  I am dumb but honest, like a large Newfoundland dog.  Per the nice people at WPBuffs, basically, you need to stop clicking the update button too fast if you didn’t spring for fast hosting.  And let’s just get right to fixing your problem!  You need to delete that .maintenance file.  Try going through your cpanel to your root or your public html folder and find that sucker, right click and delete.  If any of this sounds confusing, please call me or some other nerd and let us do it.  Then go back in time and do your updates on a staging site.  There’s so many times in life when we have to swing without a net, why would you chance your website you worked so hard on it when it’s so easy to test things first on an unsuspecting staging site?  It’s like if you had an identical twin you hated and your surgeon could practice all operations on him first before working on you, so everyone sees how it will turn out.

That’s kind of gruesome but you get the point.  Updates can and do sometimes go wrong and best to test things out first.  If you do get stuck during an update, don’t panic, just delete that pesky .maintenance file.  Good luck!

Here’s also the rundown on how to do this trick also from the nice folks at kinsta, with some additional helpful advice.