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After backing up my site with Total Upkeep this morning I updated three plugins. One of them, called Under Construction, failed and now I have a critical error. How do I restore this morning’s backup when I don’t have access to the dashboard? Here’s the message I get when I try to access the dashboard: There has been a critical error on your website. Please check your site admin email inbox for instructions. (Then there’s a link to learn more about debugging, but when I paste the link into this question, the question is blocked. I am not getting any emails as mentioned in the message.)
Hi Catherine-
I’m very sorry to hear about the fatal error on your website. For the short answer of how to restore a backup when you can’t access your Dashboard, you can use Total Upkeep’s command line utilities to restore your recent backup. Here’s a couple of other steps you can take as well.
First, check your Email’s SPAM folder for the notice. Keep in mind that your Administrator Email might not be your normal email address. Typically, it will be the same email address you used to create your hosting account.
If you locate the email, it will contain a link that you can use to log into your site with the offending plugin disabled. If you can’t find it, try these next steps.
Since you mentioned you know which plugin failed, you can try disabling the plugin with FTP or your host’s file manager. If you have SSH access, you can also disable the plugin with the command line. Your web host should also be able to help you disable a plugin if you’re not able to use either method.
Hi —
My site is completely down after updating a plugin. How can I restore the Total Upkeep backup I completed just before I updated the plugin, since I don’t have access the the site at all? (Right now the site is completely down and I suspect it’s complicated by the fact that the bad plug-in is an Under Construction plug-in, which blocks the site from viewers who don’t have a user name and password to log in)
Thanks.
Hi Catherine-
Have you had a chance to try the suggestions from my last response?
Another tip I’d like to point out- it won’t help for this time but in the future- make sure that you create your pre-update backups from the updates screen, rather than as a manual backup. That way, your site will be able to automatically recover from an error resulting from an update.
Hi Jesse – sorry, I’ve been dealing with a few system issues and this got buried. I did check my spam folders for every email associated with the site – actually every email address I have, period – and don’t have anything. I’ll revisit your first response and try the rest of your suggestions. Thanks.
Hi Catherine-
No need to be sorry, I definitely know how it feels to be dealing with a crashed website.
When you do get access back to your website, make sure to double-check the email address your admin account is using, and possibly consider using an SMTP Email solution to make sure you can receive emails from your site in the future.
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