Disabling a plugin that crashed your site…when your site is still crashed!

I’m…ah…only familiar with this because a “friend” may have installed a plugin on a client’s site and that site may have gone down like a ton of bricks.  Who would have thought that Modern Tribe’s free version of Events Calendar (downloaded more than 400,000 times) would crash their theme?  Not me…er, my friend!

Anyway, the next time this happens, fear not.  The awesome people at WPBeginner.com lay it all out step by step for you in this helpful article about deactivating plugins.  But basically

1. ftp into the back end of your WordPress site (I like FileZilla)
2.  navigate to wpcontent > plugins folder
3. right click and rename the plugins folder, maybe something like notworkingplugins or evilplugins
4. leave your ftp connection up, you’ll be coming back
5. try signing in to yoursite.com/wp-admin again (if the problem was with a plugin, you should be able to gain access again)
6. rename the plugins folder again to “plugins”
7. reactivate the plugins one by one in wp admin console until you encounter a problem again (then you’ve found the offending plugin and can repeat the steps above, deactivate them all, sign in, reactivate and then delete that one)

I do hope this helps someone.  Let me know if you use this tip!