How to disable a plugin or theme in WordPress without access to wp-admin

Modified on Sat, 16 Oct, 2021 at 10:45 AM

While WordPress has a great amount of plugins and themes to improve your website, some of them might break your installation resulting in white screens or error messages. White pages can disable access to wp-admin and prevents that you can disable the plugin or theme using the traditional way.

WARNING

Always make a backup. While this method usually works, we can not take responsibility for this.


Note Some plugins have additional files. Consult the developer for how to fully uninstall such plugins. Furthermore, the plugin it not really uninstalled. There might be data stored in the database as well.

How to hard disable a plugin

  1. Use FTP or the File manager to navigate to your files.
  2. Navigate to wp-content/plugins
  3. Rename the plugin you want to disable (like wpforms to wpforms-backup).
  4. Test if WordPress works now.

How to hard disable a theme

  1. Use FTP or the File manager to navigate to your files.
  2. Navigate to wp-content/themes
  3. Rename the plugin you want to disable (like theme-x to theme-x-backup).
  4. Test if WordPress works now.

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