How to recover your WordPress site after a plugin install or upgrade goes wrong

If you’ve been using WordPress for awhile now, chances are you have had to upgrade a plugin . ( If you haven’t, go check your site now, because you probably have some updates to perform). For the most part, things will go smoothly and all will be good in your (WordPress) world, but on occasion, you’ll run into an issue while either installing or updating a plugin that will cause your site to seemingly disappear, showing nothing but a blank browser.

Once you get past the inevitable moment of panic that happens when your website disappears, here is how you can recover from what is now known as the “White Screen of Death”.

Step 1. Log into your account via an FTP client

I work on a Mac and use Coda as my FTP client, but whatever platform you’re on and whatever FTP client you’re using, the process doesn’t change.

Step 2. Navigate to your plugins folder

You’ll find this folder inside the wp-content folder along with the folder for your themes and uploads

Open up the plugins folder and you will find a folder for all of the plugins you have installed.

Step 3. Delete the offender!

Now simply delete the folder for the plugin you just tried installing/updating.

Go back to your sites main page and all should be right in your website world again!

This works for both the aforementioned white screen of death and the error message you get when you try to update a plugin and the  update fails because of an error about the folder already existing.

Now just take a deep breath and get back to regularly scheduled programming ( or blogging in this case)!

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