How to Deactivate all WordPress Plugins (When No Access to WP-Admin)

Want to deactivate all WordPress plugins? But no access to WP-admin dashboard? You can simply deactivate all plugins using hosting control panel or FTP?

Some WordPress errors are really worst that lock you out from your WP-admin dashboard. In this case, you need to be little technical because you’re going to manipulate back-end elements.

Need not to worry much about, it’s easy to disable all WordPress plugins from back-end if you follow our step by step guide.

You can do this either via FTP connection or cPanel. Here I will explain three methods.

1. Deactivate WordPress plugins using FTP
2. Deactivate WordPress plugins using cPanel File Manager
3. Deactivate WordPress Plugins using phpMyadmin

 You can use any method, first two are the easiest.

Note: If you have any doubt, let me clarify.  You’re deactivating plugins, not uninstalling. Deactivating plugins won’t affect your website or plugin setting. Once you activate them, all settings will be restored.

Deactivate All WordPress Plugins Using FTP

» Login to your website’s FTP client.

» Once connected, navigate to the wp-content folder 

» Click wp-content to see “plugins” folder. Here all your WordPress plugins installation information are present .

» Right-click and rename “plugins” to “plugins.deactivate” to deactivate all installed plugins.

» Check if you’re able to access your WordPress admin dashboard. If yes? there is an issue with one of the installed plugins.

» Now rename the “plugins.deactivate” folder back to “plugins”. Doing this won’t activate all your plugins.

» Now, using the WordPress admin dashboard, activate plugins one by one until your website breaks again. At this point you know which plugin exactly causing the issue.

Deactivate All WordPress Plugins Using File Manager in cPanel

» Login to your hosting and navigate to cPanel

» Click on the file manager [If you have multiple domains in your hosting, then select the domain where you want to deactivate all the plugins]

» Open wp-content folder to find plugins folder

» Rename the plugins folder to plugins.deactivate to deactivate all the plugins at once [If you want to deactivate a particular plugin, then open plugins folder, select the plugin and right click and deactivate]

» After you get access to your wp-admin dashboard, rename the plugins folder back to the original “plugins” and hit save.

» Now, open wp-admin dashboard, and activate the plugins one by one.

Deactivate All WordPress Plugins Using phpMyAdmin

» Login to cPanel or Login to your host and open cPanel from there. 

» Navigate to PHP My Admin under “Databases” folder.

» Under PHP My Admin, search for active_plugins. 

» Once you find it, click on edit. Replace the code in option_value field with a:0:{} and hit “Go” to save the changes. 

» Now, you have successfully deactivated all the plugins using PHP my admin. 

» Check if you have access to WP admin dashboard now, if yes? Then there is an issue with one of your WordPress plugins. 

» Activate plugins one by one until your website breaks again to know which particular plugin is causing the error. 

Uninstall the plugin and report it to the plugin author, Hope this helped you deactivate all plugins in WordPress.

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