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Disable WordPress Plugins in the Database

If a WordPress plugin has broken your site or stopped you accessing the dashboard, you can disable plugins from the database.

This is useful when you cannot log in to WordPress to disable the plugin normally.

Before editing the database, take a backup if possible.

To disable plugins:

  1. Log in to the 4UHosting client area at https://clients.4uhosting.co.uk.
  2. Choose My Services.
  3. Find the hosting service and select Manage.
  4. Select Login to cPanel from the left side.
  5. Open phpMyAdmin.
  6. Select the database used by the WordPress site.
  7. Open the table ending in _options.
  8. Find the row named active_plugins.
  9. Edit the row and copy the existing option_value into a text file before changing it.
  10. Clear the option_value field.
  11. Save the change.

This disables the active plugins for the site. If the dashboard starts working again, log in to WordPress and re-enable plugins one at a time until you find the one causing the issue.

The table prefix may not always be wp_, so the options table may have a different name, such as abc_options.