Carrie Dils

WordPress Developer, Consultant, and Instructor

Quick Fix: Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance.

Originally published on by 157 Comments

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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 don’t panic. The fix is easy and I’ll 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, that’s a WordPress-generated notification that alerts any visitors about what’s happening with your site.

Let’s say you’re updating your plugins and someone happens to visit your site during the process. They’d see that notification message, say “okay” to themselves, and hopefully refresh the page in a minute.

This message is normal behavior.

What’s 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 doesn’t get deleted and the message won’t go away.

The answer? Delete it manually.

Here are the steps:

  • Log into your web server via FTP or your web host’s control panel.*
  • Locate the root of your WordPress install (this is where you’ll 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 everything’s normal again.

* If you don’t have this information for some reason, take a moment to slap yourself, then run around in a state of mild hysteria until you can reach someone who can give you this information. And then slap yourself again if you ever consider editing your WordPress site without this information in hand.

Update: If you don’t see a .maintenance file, try this out . (thanks lifanovsky for that tip!)

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Are you using a staging site?

A staging site is an exact duplicate of your live site – it’s a place where you can install new plugins or try out different configurations without the danger of tanking your live site. Once you’ve made any changes you want to your staging site (and are sure everything is working), you can “push” it to your live site.

If you’re not using a staging site, I strongly recommend using one so that you can avoid problems like the one I talked about in this post.

A quality web host typically has site staging available. My favorites are WPEngine and Flywheel. If you’d like to see things in action, here’s a tutorial on how to use Flywheel staging sites and another one on how to work with WPEngine staging.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. LOVED your post script… It’s amazing how many people don’t have their cpanel access (not that I know much about what to do with it once I’m there!). I know that little I’m dangerous! 😉

    Reply

  6. Great tip! Though sometimes this won’t help. Additional step is to find the file called wp-activate.php in the root directory, find WP_INSTALLING parameter there and change it from true to false. This way:
    define(«WP_INSTALLING», false);

    Then save the file and we’re done.

    Reply

  8. Hi I have similar problem but not the same. My website works all right, but I can’t log to the admin panel because I get the message. I chcecked everywhere for .maitonance, but I can’t find it. Only folders that were modified today are wp-content/plugins and wp-content/upgrade (this folder is empty). Have you got any ideas how to fix it?

    Reply

  20. Hi Carrie, Thanks for a great post, although I’ve a slightly different issue. Like an earlier reader, I only see the message when I am trying to access /wp-admin page and I can’t find a .maintenance file in my root folder. Any idea how to fix it? Advice gratefully appreciated.

    Reply

    • Hey Elizabeth,
      This may be happening due to a wonky plugin or weird active theme setting in the database. First step is to log into your server via FTP (or cPanel or whatever), go to /wp-content/plugins and rename the plugins folder to something else, say pluginsX.

      What that does is immediately disable all plugins (WordPress isn’t looking for a folder called pluginsX). Try accessing /wp-admin/ again and see if that does the trick. If so, go back and change the name back to the original on the plugins folder. All your plugins will be de-activated. Re-activate one by one to find the culprit. Sometimes there may not even be a culprit – something just may have gone sideways.

      So that’s what I’d try first. If that doesn’t help, then it’s possible that the active theme (according to the database) doesn’t exist or is corrupt. You’ll need to change to a theme that does exist (preferably a default theme, such as Twenty Sixteen). There are lots of tutorials for that, but here’s one to start you out.

      One of those methods should set you right. If not, get in touch with your hosting company. 🙂

      Reply

      • (Slapping sounds…)

        (Man yelling in fustration…) “GAAAAAHHHHH”

        (Man switches to Google and googles….)

        (Man clicks on this result and intensely reads inches away from the monitor.)

        (Man follows instructions….)

        (Man sighs…)

        Hot damn if I ever saw a perfect solution. Thank you for sharing this. This happened to me on my local “staging” site and I couldn’t find the .maintenance file. Not sure why but reading the comments led me to this solution you just described here.

        And all that hard work has been saved.

        Thanks for a great entertaining post. I gotta admit slapping myself stung a little bit but it sure made me chuckle.

        Reply

  21. I have been using WordPress for years and had never had this happen before. I was just starting to sweat when I found your easy fix with very clear instructions. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

    Reply

  23. The message was the same and I wasn’t using maintenance mode plugin.
    As I wrote in my earlier comment: website was working but admin panel was blocked by the message. I spent few hours on Thursday trying to fix it, but nothing worked. I had busy Friday so I decided to try to fix it on Monday. When I hit /wp-admin page on Monday everything was fine, nothing to fix.
    I had that issue once again when I was updating multiple plugins at once, but this time it fixed itself within an hour.

    Reply

  26. I have “Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute.” but reading the solution on this page I HAVE AUTO SOLVED!! But why and how? Thank from Bangladesh.

    Reply

  29. Thank you for the heads up. In my case, by the time I checked via FTP, there was no .maintenance file and I checked back and my site was working properly again. For whatever reason, it took the server a particularly long time to update the plugin.

    Reply

  41. Wheeee! Thank you! Luckily I AM using a staging site but still this was the perfect tutorial to save me buckets of time.

    Reply

  47. My update of a plugin today failed due to an internal error, then I saw this message. I was looking for an option in my database but in vain. Then I found your post and it saved me a lot of time and headache. Thanks.

    Reply

    • Yeah, changing a plugin’s name will automatically de-activate it, so if that was the culprit you found the easiest way to get your site back online. Thanks for sharing!

      Reply

  64. Every time I found your article on google, I feels I ‘ll get my answer. really amazing efforts you put on your article to make it easier to understand.

    Reply

  71. Great! Thanks for this wonderful tip. I’ve just recovered from the Scheduled Maintenance error after applying your fix. However, I’d updated the plugin on my local WP instance (not on the remote site) to be on safer side.

    Reply

  73. Carrie – I could really use your help. My wordpress site is down with this message and I’ve tried all your workarounds and nothing is fixing it. http://www.houmalittletheatre.com
    I’m really at a loss and the company is on my back to get it fixed ASAP (it’s been 5 days).
    Any help would be appreciated.

    Reply

  80. Thanks got me to where the maint message came from, but then the whole site went down with no message after deleting it. I had just updated a couple of plugins. and one of them failed with a fatal error. took a while to figure out what happen. A word to the wise, only update one plugin at a time so you know who got ya.

    Reply

  82. Hi Carrie, I wrote a similar post back in 2013 but today your post has educated me even further. I didn’t know about the @lifanovsky wp-activate.php fix. I hope you don’t mind but I added my own version to my post and copied your comment link as the credit source. What a fab find! Happy to remove it if it’s an issue though.

    Reply

  89. Carrie, thank you for this! I just accidentally refreshed an update in progress and got this error, and fixed it exactly as described.

    Reply

  91. Hi Carrie,

    Thank you for this article. It worked, the only thing I needed to figure out was the location, and it was very easily to be found. It was in the root directory.

    I love your blog’s theme as well though.

    Reply

  96. Can anyone offer an additional suggestions? Same problem here. The site has no .maintenance file and tried this: Additional step is to find the file called wp-activate.php in the root directory, find WP_INSTALLING parameter there and change it from true to false. This way:
    define(«WP_INSTALLING», false);

    It won’t let me make the change; says: Couldn’t get handle: SSH2_FX_PERMISSION_DENIED – Permission denied

    Thank you!

    Reply

    • That’s a permissions issue where it sounds like your user account does have privileges to make those changes. I’d recommend contacting your web host.

      Reply

  101. Thanks so much for your simple solution. I have just updated 3 plugins in wordpress 4.9.7. And bum, I have this error. I try to find it out in 30 minutes & at the end found in your quick fix.
    Once again, thanks for your tip and hope that you will write more helpful articles in future.

    Reply

  102. Just one quick extra tip — especially when you don’t have the FTP option handy and need to use cPanel.

    In cPanel, if you use the File Manager to view your WordPress root, you may not see this file as it is a “hidden file”.

    Either 1) when launching File Manage within cPanel, if it gives you the option to select a directory to view, check the box that says “Show Hidden Files (dotfiles)”.

    Or if your File Manage launches without the options panel visible (as you have previously chosen to skip the option panel in future) — then find the “Settings” link and cog wheel in the top right, and you can turn on showing hidden files from there — and you’ll then see the pesky .mainteance file to delete.

    Reply

  117. Hello Carrie! Really timeless your helpful post! This stressful message appeared on my website when I was updating a plugin! As you said so well, I panicked because, even if my website is brand new, I have big projects with him! So, I had the good reflex to search in google, and I came across your excellent post. Admittedly, I the website corrected itself, but your article still reassured me and I was sure to get there following your instructions. Thank you so much. And congratulations for your writing style, so convincing and reassuring. Best regards.

    Reply

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