You need to disable all WordPress plugins, however you can’t go into the WordPress admin area?

When troubleshooting issues with WordPress, you will frequently be given the recommendation to deactivate all plugins and then reactivate them one at a time.

However, what if you are unable to access wp-admin and hence cannot deactivate them? How to deactivate all Plugins in this case?

If you are unable to enter the wp-admin part of your website, this article will demonstrate how you can effortlessly deactivate all of the WordPress plugins.

Without logging into the administration section of your WordPress website, you may disable plugins using one of two ways that are often utilized. You are free to select the approach that appears to be less difficult.

Method I – Deactivate All WordPress Plugins Using FTP
Method II – Deactivate All Plugins Using phpMyAdmin

Method 1. Deactivate All WordPress Plugins Using FTP

For this method, you will need to use either an FTP client or the file manager option in the control panel for your WordPress hosting.

First, use an FTP client or the file manager in cPanel to connect to your website. FileZilla or Cyberduck are two FTP clients that we like. After you’re connected, go to the /wp-content/ folder.

There is a folder called plugins inside the wp-content folder. This is where WordPress keeps all of your website’s plugins.

You need to right-click the folder called “Plugins” and choose “Rename.” Next, you can give the plugins folder any name you want. In our case, it will be called plugins.deactivate.

This will deactivate all of your plugins!

At start WordPress looks for a folder called “plugins.” When it can’t find the folder, it automatically turns off the plugins in the database that are currently running.

Most of the time, this is used when you can’t get into your admin area. You should be able to log in to your WordPress admin area now. If this is the case you know that one of your plugins has to be uninstalled.

In the WordPress admin area, if you go to the Plugins » Installed Plugins page, you will see notifications for all the plugins that have been turned off.

You will also see that all of your plugins are gone. Don’t worry, they’re all fine, and it’s easy to get them back.

Just open your FTP client again and go to the /wp-content/ folder. Simply rename the plugins.deactivate folder back to plugins.

You now just have to activate one plugin at a time until your site breaks again to identify the problematic plugin.

You will now know for sure which plugin caused the issue. Then, you can delete the folder for that plugin from your site using FTP or ask the plugin’s author for help.

Method 2. Deactivate All Plugins Using phpMyAdmin

We think that the FTP method is definitely easier. But you can also use phpMyAdmin to turn off all of your WordPress plugins.

Before you do anything, it’s important to make a full backup of your database. If anything goes wrong, this will help and it is always better to be safe than sorry.

You need to access your web hosting dashboard and run the “phpMyAdmin” icon in the Databases section. This will open phpMyAdmin in a new window in your browser. Please note that not every web hoster does allow its customers access to phpMyAdmin.

If it isn’t already chosen, you will have to choose your WordPress database. After selecting the database, phpMyAdmin shows you the tables in the WordPress database.

In our example tYn_ comes before the name of each table in the database. Your table’s database prefix is most likely different.

You have to click on the table called “wp options.” In the wp options table, there are rows for each option. You need to look for the “active plugins” option and then click the “Edit” link next to it.

You’ll need to change the option value field to a:0:{}. and then click “Go” to commit your changes.

Using phpMyAdmin, you have successfully turned off now all of the WordPress plugins. If a plugin was keeping you from getting into WordPress admin, you should now be able to log in.

We hope you found this post helpful in understanding how to disable plugins in WordPress. You may also want to learn our tutorial how to backup your WordPress Blog and how to restore your WordPress Site the best way possible.