Category: WordPress

Is your WordPress website stuck in maintenance mode? Don’t panic! Although this issue can lock you (and your visitors) out of your website, fortunately it’s often easily fixed.

This guide will discuss why WordPress websites get stuck in maintenance mode and walk you through the steps to quickly regain access using FTP or RunCloud.

By the end of this article, you will be able to get your WordPress website out of maintenance mode and back up and running properly.

Let’s get started!

What Causes WordPress to Get Stuck in Maintenance Mode?

When WordPress performs updates, it creates a temporary .maintenance file and enters maintenance mode to prevent user access during the process. However, seven main factors can interrupt this process and leave your site stuck:

#1 – Interrupted Updates

The most common cause is when the update process is interrupted before completion. This can happen due to poor internet connectivity, browser closure during updates, or server timeouts. When these interruptions occur, WordPress cannot complete the cleanup process that removes the .maintenance file.

#2 – Server Resource Limitations

Insufficient PHP memory limits or execution timeouts can force the update process to stop midway. This is particularly common when updating multiple plugins simultaneously or dealing with large themes. Due to these limitations, the site remains in maintenance mode when the server kills the process.

#3 – Plugin or Theme Conflicts

Incompatible plugins, themes, or WordPress core updates can trigger conflicts during maintenance. These conflicts may cause the update process to fail, leaving the maintenance mode active.

Suggested read: How to Fix the HTTP Error 503 Service Unavailable in 2024 [SOLVED]

#4 – File Permission Issues

Incorrect file permissions can prevent WordPress from properly creating or deleting the .maintenance file. This often occurs after server migrations or when file permissions are manually modified.

#5 – Multiple Update Attempts

Starting a new update while another is in progress can create conflicting processes. This scenario is common in multi-user environments where multiple administrators attempt updates simultaneously.

Suggested read: 3 Ways to Fix Too Many Authentication Failures SSH Root? [SOLVED]

#6 – Manual Activation

If you or someone on your team manually turned on maintenance mode (maybe through the wp-config.php file or a maintenance plugin) and forgot to turn it off, your site will stay in maintenance mode.

#7 – Browser Cache Confusion

Sometimes, your browser’s cache might show an old version of your site that was in maintenance mode, even if the actual site is working fine. Try reloading the website in a private browser window or on a different computer to see if the problem persists.

Suggested read: 10 Best WordPress Management Tools To Easily Manage Multiple Websites

How to Identify if Your WordPress Site is Stuck in Maintenance Mode

When you update your website, it sometimes isn’t immediately obvious whether it’s stuck in maintenance mode or just taking a long time to update. Here are six ways you can identify if your site is stuck in maintenance mode or not:

#1 – Visual Indicators

When your WordPress site is stuck in maintenance mode, visitors will see a message: “Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute.” This message differs from other common WordPress errors and is the primary indicator of maintenance mode issues.

#2 – Dashboard Access

You typically cannot access your WordPress admin dashboard during a stuck maintenance mode. Attempting to log in often redirects you to the maintenance message, distinguishing this issue from other access problems like database errors or a white screen of death.

Suggested read: The 12 Best cPanel Alternatives to Manage Your Servers

#3 – File System Check

A .maintenance file in your WordPress root directory confirms that maintenance mode is active. This file should only exist temporarily during updates, so its continued presence after several minutes indicates a stuck state.

#4 – Time Duration

Normal maintenance mode typically lasts less than a minute. If your site displays the maintenance message for more than 5 minutes, it’s likely stuck. This extended duration indicates that the update process wasn’t completed successfully.

Suggested read: Top 8 Popular Web Hosting Control Panels in 2024

#5 – Server Resource Usage

Analyzing server resource usage can help identify if a WordPress site is stuck in maintenance mode. If the site is truly in maintenance, resource consumption should be minimal; however, if the server consistently uses significant CPU, memory, or I/O resources while the site appears to be in maintenance mode, this is a strong indicator of an issue.

High resource usage often points to an underlying process, perhaps a stuck update or a failed plugin operation, preventing the site from exiting maintenance mode. You can address the root cause and properly resolve the maintenance mode issue by identifying the resource-intensive process.

#6 – Error Log Analysis

Checking your WordPress error logs can reveal failed update attempts or PHP errors that occurred during the update process. These logs often contain specific error messages or stack traces that can help identify the root cause of the stuck maintenance mode.

Suggested read: How To Install WordPress With RunCloud | Step-By-Step Guide

How to Fix WordPress Stuck in Maintenance Mode

When WordPress gets stuck in maintenance mode, it can be frustrating for both site owners and visitors, but the good news is that it’s often a simple fix.

Step 1. Access Your Website Files

First, you need to obtain access to your website’s files. You can do this in one of two primary ways: using an FTP client like FileZilla, WinSCP, or CyberDuck, or, if you’re using RunCloud, you can access your files directly through the user-friendly dashboard.

If you use a FTP client, you’ll need to connect to your server using your FTP credentials. You will need your server’s hostname (often your domain name), username, password, and port number (usually 21 for standard FTP or 22 for SFTP). Once connected, navigate to your WordPress root directory. This is the main directory where you’ll find folders such as wp-content, wp-admin, and wp-includes.

On this screen, ensure your FTP client is set to display hidden files. The maintenance file starts with a period (.) and is often hidden by default, so this step is essential.

Before making any modifications, always create a backup of your site files. Should something unexpected happen during the fix, you’ll have a recent, working version to restore your site.

Whether you back up using FTP or are using RunCloud and choose to download a backup, this step is crucial for peace of mind. Taking a moment to back up beforehand can save you a lot of headaches later!

Step 2. Delete the .maintenance File

Once you’ve accessed your WordPress root directory, look for a file named “.maintenance”. This file tells WordPress to display the maintenance mode message. WordPress automatically removes this file when updates are completed successfully, but when updates fail or are interrupted, the file remains and keeps your site in maintenance mode.

While it’s usually just a simple text file containing a timestamp, having a backup is always good practice. After securing your backup, you can proceed to delete the .maintenance file. Most FTP clients allow you to delete files by right-clicking and selecting “Delete” or pressing the Delete key.

After removing the file, wait a few moments for your web server to register the change. Then, try accessing your WordPress site again. The maintenance mode message should be gone, and your site should return to normal operation. If you’re still seeing the maintenance message, you might need to clear your browser cache (which we’ll cover next).

Step 3. Clear Your Browser Cache

Browser caching can sometimes cause your website to appear stuck in maintenance mode even after you’ve deleted the .maintenance file. This happens because your browser has stored (or “cached”) the maintenance mode page and continues to display it instead of fetching the fresh content from your server.

Start by clearing your browser’s cache completely. In Chrome, you can do this by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Delete (Windows) or Command+Shift+Delete (Mac) and selecting “Cached images and files”. Make sure to choose a time range of “All time” to ensure a complete cache is clear. The process is similar for other browsers like Firefox or Safari, though the exact menu locations might differ.

Alternatively, you can test your site in an incognito/private browsing window after clearing the cache. This provides a clean slate without any cached data and lets you see if the maintenance mode issue is resolved. If the site works in incognito mode but still shows maintenance mode in regular browsing, you might need to clear your cache again or wait a bit longer for the cache to expire naturally.

Step 4. Using the WP-CLI to Resolve the Issue (Optional)

After deleting your .maintenance file, you can go one step further and disable all WordPress plugins on your website. However, since logging in to the WordPress dashboard is impossible, you will do this via the command line interface.

RunCloud comes with WP-CLI, a powerful command-line interface for managing WordPress installations. It offers a more technical but often more efficient approach to resolving maintenance mode issues.

Connect to your server via SSH and navigate to your WordPress installation directory. Once there, you can use various WP-CLI commands to diagnose and fix maintenance mode issues. The basic command wp maintenance-mode status will tell you if maintenance mode is active. If it is, you can use wp maintenance-mode deactivate to turn it off programmatically.

In addition, WP-CLI can help identify what caused the issue in the first place. You can use commands like wp core verify-checksums to verify the integrity of your WordPress core files or wp plugin list—-status=active to check for potentially problematic plugins.

If you want to deactivate plugins, then you can use the command wp plugin deactivate –all to deactivate all WordPress plugins. This can be useful to minimize potential conflicts causing a stuck maintenance mode or when trying to troubleshoot issues or protect your website while working on a problem. If you encounter any problem, you can use the wp site health command to get additional diagnostic information about your site’s overall health and identify any configuration issues that might have contributed to the maintenance mode problem.

Wrapping Up: Preventing Future Maintenance Mode Issues

In this guide, we have explained WordPress maintenance mode and how sometimes WordPress websites get stuck in maintenance mode. We have also provided step-by-step instructions for fixing this problem.

Although the RunCloud dashboard makes it easy to fix this problem, detecting such issues before they affect your WordPress website is even better. We recommend creating a staging environment through RunCloud’s one-click staging functionality to test all updates before applying them to your live site.

Additionally, RunCloud allows you to monitor your site’s PHP memory limits and timeout settings in its dashboard to ensure they accommodate larger updates.

Start using RunCloud today!

FAQs on Fixing WordPress Stuck in Maintenance Mode

Are your WordPress post revisions not showing? Has your WordPress revisions option suddenly become invisible, or disabled? We’ve got you covered!

In this article, we’ll explain exactly what the problems are likely to be, and how to get your WordPress revisions showing and working correctly.

WordPress is a dynamic CMS that allows website owners and content creators to easily edit and update existing content. However, the editing process isn’t always straightforward, and mistakes or unintended changes can happen.

To overcome this, WordPress provides a WordPress post revisions feature that can automatically create snapshots of your content every time you save a draft or update a published post. This built-in system allows website administrators and content creators to:

• Track changes made to content over time
• Restore previous versions of a post
• Recover accidentally deleted content
• Collaborate more effectively by maintaining a comprehensive editing history

Each revision captures the entire state of a post at a specific moment, including text, formatting, and metadata. WordPress automatically creates a new revision every time you save a draft or update a published post.

This feature provides peace of mind for content creators, bloggers, and website administrators by ensuring that no valuable work is permanently lost due to accidental deletions or unwanted edits.

Whether you’re managing a personal blog, a corporate website, or a complex multi-author platform, revisions offer a transparent, reliable mechanism to manage content development.

In this guide, we’ll discuss the challenges surrounding WordPress revisions and focus on why this feature might suddenly become invisible.

Our goal is to equip you with practical, step-by-step solutions to diagnose and resolve issues preventing your content’s version history from displaying correctly. We’ll explore the most common reasons behind missing revisions and provide clear steps to restore this functionality.

Why WordPress Revisions Are Not Showing

WordPress revisions are a powerful feature designed to track content changes, but various technical and configuration issues can interrupt their functionality. Let’s see a few reasons why WordPress revisions don’t work:

1. Revision Limit Settings: WordPress has a default limit on the number of revisions stored. If this limit is set too low or disabled, fewer revisions might appear (or none at all).
2. Plugin Interference: Some plugins that modify post-editing or database interactions can disrupt the revision tracking mechanism.
3. Theme Compatibility Issues: Custom themes might inadvertently modify WordPress core functions related to post revisions.
4. Database Configuration: Incorrect database settings or optimization plugins can suppress revision storage.
5. User Role Permissions: Certain user roles might have restricted access to viewing post revisions.

Suggested read: The Complete WordPress Speed Optimization Guide

Ways to Re-Enable WordPress Revisions

You can take steps to troubleshoot WordPress revision settings in your WordPress website.

Enabling Post Revisions from wp-config

The WordPress revisions setting in your WordPress website may be disabled. You can easily enable post revisions by editing your server’s ‘WP_POST_REVISIONS’ environment variable. To do this, you can add the following code to your wp-config.php file:

define('WP_POST_REVISIONS', 10); // Limits revisions to 10
// Or for unlimited revisions
define('WP_POST_REVISIONS', true);

This method allows fine-tuned control over revision tracking directly in your WordPress configuration file. Place the code before the line that says, “That’s all, stop editing!” and save it. Once you save the file, new revisions will be saved in your WordPress website whenever you create an edit.

Suggested read: The Complete WordPress Speed Optimization Guide

Enabling Revisions for Custom Post Types

Custom post types in WordPress require specific configurations to enable revision tracking. This process ensures your custom content types maintain the same version control capabilities as standard WordPress posts.

Method 1: Registering Custom Post Type with Revisions

When creating a custom post type, add ‘revisions’ to the ‘supports’ parameter during registration:

register_post_type('your_cpt_name', array(
    'supports' => array('title', 'editor', 'revisions'),
    'public' => true,
    'label' => 'Custom Post Type Name'
));

Suggested read: How to Migrate WordPress From Shared Hosting To Cloud Server

Method 2: Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) Integration

Custom post types in WordPress often require specific configurations to enable revision tracking. When working with plugins like Custom Post Type UI or Advanced Custom Fields (ACF), you must explicitly add revision support during post-type registration. Use the following code snippet to enable post revisions:

add_filter('acf/settings/save_json', 'my_acf_json_save_point');
function my_acf_json_save_point($path) {
    return get_stylesheet_directory() . '/acf-json';
}

By configuring these settings, you can enable revisions in custom post types, allowing you to maintain the same revision tracking capabilities as standard WordPress posts.

Suggested read: Protect Your WordPress Login pages with Cloudflare Zero Trust

Limiting Post Revisions for Better Performance

WordPress revisions consume database storage over time, potentially impacting site performance. If you run a big site with lots of revisions, your database can become bloated and sluggish. Website owners can maintain optimal database efficiency by implementing strategic revision limits while preserving critical content version history.

Proactively managing post revisions helps maintain website speed, reduces storage requirements, and ensures a streamlined content management experience. Website administrators should periodically review and optimize revision settings to balance content tracking needs with system performance.

Suggested read: The Best WordPress Caching Plugins To Speed Up Your Site (2024)

Why Disabling Revisions is No Longer Recommended

Modern web infrastructure has dramatically changed the perspective on disabling WordPress post revisions for performance optimization. What was once considered a best practice is now considered an unnecessary compromise.

Advanced hosting technologies and caching mechanisms have effectively neutralized previous performance concerns. Website administrators now recognize that version tracking provides more value than marginal resource savings.

Network-level CDNs and application-level caching solutions such as Redis and Memcached dramatically reduce database query loads. Additionally, modern database systems implement sophisticated query caching mechanisms that minimize performance overhead.

WordPress revisions consume negligible database storage compared to total website resources. Modern hosting environments handle database overhead with remarkable efficiency and scalability. Furthermore, disk storage costs have dramatically decreased, making content preservation more economical than potential data loss. The minimal computational resources required for revision tracking are inconsequential compared to other website operations.

Suggested read: The 5 Best WordPress Security Plugins (2024)

Wrapping Up WordPress Revisions Management

In this post, we’ve discussed steps for managing WordPress revisions, covering everything from troubleshooting missing versions to why revision tracking is considered useful despite minimal performance impact. You can maintain robust content version control while ensuring website efficiency by understanding revision tracking, configuration methods, and best practices.

If you are a WordPress website owner seeking streamlined deployment and management, you should use RunCloud to manage your websites.

RunCloud eliminates complex server management challenges, providing:

• One-click WordPress deployments
• Advanced caching configurations
• Security hardening
• Seamless migration tools

Optimize your WordPress website’s performance and management – get started with RunCloud.

For further WordPress optimization insights, explore RunCloud’s comprehensive guides:

• WordPress Speed Optimization Guide
• WordPress Cloud Migration Strategies
• WordPress Security Best Practices

FAQs on WordPress Post Revisions

If you manage a WordPress website, you’ll be very familiar with the WordPress dashboard, which is used for content creation, site maintenance, and administrative tasks.

However, many users feel that the default admin menu is cluttered, with many essential tools scattered, while less-used sections of the website consume valuable screen space.

This comprehensive guide will walk you through multiple strategies to take complete control of your WordPress dashboard menu. From simple drag-and-drop techniques to advanced custom coding methods, you’ll discover how to:

• Rearrange admin menu items with precision
• Hide unnecessary menu sections
• Create role-based menu experiences
• Implement custom menu orders using PHP
• Leverage powerful WordPress and plugin-based solutions

Whether you’re struggling with a cluttered dashboard, seeking to improve team workflow, or simply want a more personalized administrative experience, this guide will provide the tools and knowledge to transform your WordPress backend into a clean dashboard.

Let’s get started!

Benefits of Reordering Your WordPress Dashboard Menu

Rearranging your WordPress dashboard menu improves your administrative experience, as a cluttered interface transforms into a personalized, efficient workspace. This customization saves time and dramatically improves workflow.

This dashboard customization allows you to:

• Prioritize the tools and sections you use most frequently, bringing them to the top of the menu for instant access.
• Reduce cognitive load by organizing menu items in a way that makes logical sense to your specific workflow.
• Minimize the time spent hunting for specific settings or features.
• Create a more comfortable and personalized administrative environment that reflects your unique working style.

Once you modify your site menu according to your needs, content management, site maintenance, and administrative tasks become more intuitive. You’ll focus on creating content, not navigating a complex dashboard.

Suggested read: Protect Your WordPress Login pages with Cloudflare Zero Trust

How to Reorder Dashboard Menu Items in WordPress

So we know why you should re-order your menu items, now let’s see how to do this.

Method 1: Reorder Dashboard Menu Items via Admin Menu Editor Plugin

Step 1 – Install Admin Menu Editor Plugin

Start by navigating to your WordPress dashboard and clicking on “Plugins” in the left-hand menu, then select “Add New“, and use the search bar to find “Admin Menu Editor” by searching for the plugin name.

Click the “Install Now” button next to the plugin, and after installation, activate the plugin by clicking the “Activate” button. This will enable the menu customization features in your WordPress backend.

Suggested read: Everything You Need To Know About wp-config.php File

Step 2 – Rearrange the Menu Items from Plugin Settings

After activation, locate the new “Menu Editor” option that will appear in your WordPress dashboard sidebar and click on it to open the customization menu. On this screen, you’ll see a full representation of your current dashboard menu structure.

You can use the intuitive drag-and-drop functionality to reorder menu items by simply clicking and holding an item and then dragging it to your desired position. This allows you to prioritize the most frequently used sections and create a more personalized administrative experience that matches your specific workflow and preferences.

Suggested read: 10 Best WordPress Management Tools To Easily Manage Multiple Websites

Step 3 – Customize Button Actions

Admin Menu Editor provides features such as access control based on user roles, multisite settings management, and precise menu positioning. Administrators can use these features to create highly tailored dashboard experiences that enhance security, streamline workflow, and prevent unauthorized access to sensitive site areas.

For example, a large organization with multiple content creators could use these settings to ensure that writers only see post-related menus, and editors have additional publishing capabilities, while keeping critical settings like plugin management and site-wide configurations exclusively accessible to top-level administrators.

Additionally, the Admin Menu Editor’s debugging and error verbosity levels allow technical teams to troubleshoot menu permission issues efficiently. Its options range from minimal error reporting to comprehensive diagnostic information, making it invaluable for agencies managing numerous client websites.

Suggested read: How to Easily Optimize WordPress Website With RunCloud Hub

Method 2: Manual Theme File Editing (For Advanced Users)

If you prefer a more technical approach or can’t use plugins, you can manually edit menu items by modifying your theme’s functions.php file using custom PHP code. However, this is a technical method which is only recommended for advanced users as it requires:

• A good understanding of PHP
• Permission to edit the WordPress code directly

Step 1: Accessing the Theme Customization Files

Open your RunCloud WordPress website’s theme directory, typically located in wp-content/themes/your-theme-name/, and locate the functions.php file using the file manager or via SSH connection. If you’re using a child theme (recommended), open the child theme’s functions.php file to ensure your customizations are not lost during theme updates.

Suggested read: The Complete WordPress Speed Optimization Guide

Step 2: Customizing Menu Order with PHP Code

Add the following custom PHP code to your functions.php file to reorder the WordPress dashboard menu items:

// RunCloud WordPress Dashboard Menu Customization
// Enable custom menu ordering
add_filter( 'custom_menu_order', 'runcloud_custom_menu_order', 10, 1 );
add_filter( 'menu_order', 'runcloud_custom_menu_order', 10, 1 );
function runcloud_custom_menu_order( $menu_ord ) {
     if ( !$menu_ord ) return true;
     return array(
          'index.php',            // Dashboard
          'separator1',           // First separator
          'edit.php?post_type=page', // Pages
          'edit.php',             // Posts          // Add or remove menu items as needed
     );
}

Step 3: Save The Changes

After making the necessary changes to your functions.php file, you can save it and refresh your WordPress dashboard. The updated menu list will reflect on your dashboard immediately.

Advanced WordPress Dashboard Customization Techniques

WordPress provides a rich set of built-in functions that allow for even more sophisticated menu and page customization beyond basic ordering. Here are some powerful functions to further enhance your dashboard management:

• add_menu_page() enables you to create entirely new top-level menu items in the WordPress dashboard. It gives you complete flexibility to introduce custom administrative sections tailored to your specific website needs. This function allows you to specify the menu title, capability requirements, unique slug, and even a custom icon for your new menu item.
• The remove_menu_page() function allows developers to remove specific top-level admin menu items from the WordPress dashboard by providing the menu’s unique slug. By calling this function within the admin_menu action hook, you can selectively hide menu pages and customize sections in the WordPress admin interface.
• add_media_page() specifically allows you to add custom pages to the Media menu, which can be incredibly useful for creating specialized media management interfaces or implementing custom media-related functionality.
• add_meta() offers a programmatic way to add custom metadata to posts, which can be particularly helpful for creating advanced content management systems or implementing complex editorial workflows. This function allows you to dynamically attach additional information to your WordPress content that can be used for filtering, sorting, or displaying extra details.
• add_menu_classes() enables fine-tuned control over the CSS classes applied to top-level administration menu items, allowing you to customize the visual presentation and behavior of your dashboard navigation. This function is particularly useful for advanced theming and creating more intuitive administrative interfaces that match your specific design requirements.

Wrapping Up

In this guide, we have provided you with steps to modify and customize your WordPress dashboard. However, when implementing dashboard menu customizations, you should always test your modifications in a staging environment to ensure they don’t disrupt your website’s functionality or user experience.

If you are using RunCloud, you can simply do this by using our one-click staging feature. RunCloud also makes WordPress installation and updates incredibly straightforward, allowing users to manage complex web infrastructure with remarkable ease.

What truly distinguishes RunCloud is its atomic deployments functionality, which allows you to create version-controlled WordPress development. You can use this to create staging sites for risk-free testing of customizations.

Master your WordPress sites with RunCloud! Start your FREE RunCloud trial today

FAQs About the WordPress Dashboard Menu