Quick Fix: Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance.
Ever tried updating some WordPress plugins and had the screen freeze? Did you refresh madly only to end up with this message?
Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute.
Well dont panic. The fix is easy and Ill walk you through it.
First things first
Why does this error happen?
When you go to update a plugin, WordPress puts itself in a temporary maintenance mode state. When you see the Briefly unavailable message, thats a WordPress-generated notification that alerts any visitors about whats happening with your site.
Lets say youre updating your plugins and someone happens to visit your site during the process. Theyd see that notification message, say okay to themselves, and hopefully refresh the page in a minute.
This message is normal behavior.
Whats not normal is when your server has a slow response time or for some reason the update script is interrupted (or times out). In that case, the friendly notification morphs into a moment of dread and panic.
How to fix it.
When this happens, WordPress generates a .maintenance
file in the root directory of the installation. With normal behavior, the update script completes and WordPress auto-removes the .maintenance
file. In the case of an interruption of some sort, this file doesnt get deleted and the message wont go away.
The answer? Delete it manually.
Here are the steps:
- Log into your web server via FTP or your web hosts control panel.*
- Locate the root of your WordPress install (this is where youll find folders for wp-content, wp-admin, and wp-includes)
- Look for a file called
.maintenance
- Delete it
- Refresh your WordPress site and sigh a giant sigh of relief that everythings normal again.