GoDaddy Help

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.

Warning: Always make a backup of your site before troubleshooting or making any changes.

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 icon in the database 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, you can delete it 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:

More info