Disable WordPress plugins in the database

If you cannot access your WordPress dashboard, you can disable all your plugins in the database. This can be helpful when troubleshooting errors on your site.

Note: When you disable some plugins, your site may look or function differently. Also, if you prefer using FTP, you can disable plugins through an FTP app instead.

1. Sign in to phpMyAdmin.
2. In phpMyAdmin, in the left-side menu, select the name of the database your site uses.
3. Under Table, select the options table by selecting the text, not the checkbox. The table name is preceded by the database prefix (the prefix should be something like wp_ or wp_1wsryb9585_).
4. In the option_name column, find the active_plugins entry. You may need to navigate beyond the first page of entries by selecting Next at the bottom of the page.
5. Next to the active_plugins entry, select Edit.
6. In the option_value row, select all the text found in the field, copy it, and paste it into a text editor.
7. Once the text is copied to a safe place, replace it with a:0:{} in phpMyAdmin.
8. At the bottom of the page, select Go to apply the change and disable plugins.

You can re-enable your plugins at any time by editing the active_plugins entry again and pasting in the text you removed earlier.

Related steps

• If you're troubleshooting an issue and managed to fix the error by disabling all plugins, here's how to pinpoint which plugin caused the issue:
  • If you regain access to your WordPress dashboard, you can start enabling plugins again one by one to check which one will break your site.
  • If you continue troubleshooting the issue from the database, you can disable individual plugins in the database until you find the faulty plugin.

More info

• If you are not familiar with phpMyAdmin and you can access your WordPress dashboard, you can disable your plugins from there.
• Troubleshooting WordPress
• Disable a WordPress plugin with FTP
• Change my WordPress theme in the database
• If you don't want to disable plugins yourself, our WordPress Premium Support team can do that for you.