TECH NOTE: This is a more advanced technology tip. It is for those of us who can access the C-Panel for their WordPress Blog. Specifically, it is for people who use Bluehost.com as a hosting site for that blog. This includes me – I wrote this here so I can find it the next time it happens to me!
I woke up yesterday morning and — randomly — I could no longer access the screen where I log into my blog. I typed the URL but all that came up was a white page with nothing else on it. Never mind that my site was still fully functional for the reading public.
When things go wrong with WordPress, I am always first suspicious of plugins and theme compatibility issues, but I had no easy way to check these within the WordPress dashboard this time because I couldn’t access it without the log in screen.
I manage all my blogs and websites on a single bluehost.com hosting account. This gives me easier backdoor access to files as well as lots of flexibility to create domain-specific emails and website redirects. It’s also super inexpensive as compared to even places like Go-Daddy because you pay a flat fee (approx $7/month; less with promo codes) regardless of the number of sites hosted or unique emails created. (It’s also easy to redirect those emails.) You can also register domain names fairly inexpensively here, too.
I really like being able to do all of this in one location.
An extra bonus: The help desk is in the United States, picks up the phone and is really helpful.
After I Googled the problem and landed on an intimidating blog post about how this was going to be a BIG problem that was going to take LOTS time, I dialed the Bluehost.com help desk number.
The technician diagnosed the problem (yes – plugins) quickly and then taught me how to do that diagnosis for myself easily as well as figure out which plugin was the likely problem.
Here’s how it works:
Log into your bluehost.com account C-Panel and, though the File Manager, go to the site that is having trouble and drill down to the wp-content-plugins folder. Then, using the “Change Name” feature, rename the file (e.g. from “plugins” to “plugins-old”). That immediately disables all plugins because WordPress can’t find them.
Go back to your navigation bar and type in the URL for the login page. If it works, you know that its one (or more) of the plugins that had caused the problem. Now it’s a matter of figuring out which one. Rather than going into the WP dashboard to activate them, use the same “renaming” trick to test.
Step 1: Return the plugins folder to it’s original name (wp-content-plugins)
Step 2: Open the plugins folder and rename each of plugins.
Step 3: Change them back a few at a time, testing each time to see if the login still works. (I did this 5 at a time.)
Step 4: Once you know the group of five that causing the issue, you whittle that down by changing and testing one plugin at a time until you discover the culprit.
Step 5: Delete the plugin that’s a problem, using the c-Panel Delete functionality.
Step 6: Log into the WordPress Dashboard and go to plugins to reactivate plugins as needed. I had to reactivate all of mine, including ones I uploaded as “leafs” in conjunction with the Headway Premium WordPress Theme. Once I reactivated, though, they worked as before, including the links and other information I’d previously uploaded to use with the plugins. This includes forms I’d created using Gravity Forms.
Not a bit problem. Not a lot of time to fix it. Nothing was lost but less than an hour of my time.
The solution was a little like high school science all over again, but really fast and not intimidating at all.
Why am I writing about it on this blog since so many of you don’t yest host your own wordpress blog? Three reasons:
(1) I often advise clients to think about self-hosting because it is cost and time efficient.
(2) To prove that you don’t have to be a techy to solve a tech problem, you just know where to ask for help — and then follow directions.
(3) For myself. I hope this never happens again to me, but if it does, I want to remember the solution so I can handle it quickly and move on.
And I wrote it to say Thanks to Bluehost.com for jumping in to help solve the situation so quickly while also taking the time to teach me something new!
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