Ever had that moment of terror when you make an update to your website and suddenly it’s gone? I’ve done that to myself a few times and it’s terrifying.

Today’s heart attack had to do with a plugin error after I uploaded a new template that locked me completely out of my site admin and prevented me from accessing my live site. I was unable to access any part of my site admin and therefore couldn’t remove the offending plugin. In case you’re curious, the error I received was “Fatal error: Cannot redeclare class rise_action in /home/emilylyonmoore17/public_html/emilylyonmoore.com/wp-content/plugins/rise_widgets/inc/widget-mt-cta.php.”

I did a lot of Googling as I often do when I encounter an unknown error and I learned that I could get into my site from my hosting cPanel (I use GoDaddy) or through FTP and deactivate the plugins or themes. Here’s how I did it through cPanel:

1. Log into your cPanel
2. From the cPanel home page, scroll to “Database” and clicked phpMyAdmin
3. From there I clicked on the top database option from the left sidebar and clicked “wp_options”
4. From here I went to the second page where I could find “active_plugins”
5. I clicked “edit” on “active_plugins” and copied all the text in the large text box and saved it (this is a list of all the active plugins on my site in case I wanted to go back and see what was active at that time)
   1. Note: this isn’t deleting the plugins from your site, it is deactivating them. You will still be able to see and activate all your plugins once you have site access back.
6. Delete the list of active plugins in the large box and click “Go” under the “autoload” line

After this, I was able to log into my admin panel and change my site theme (I had deleted that earlier through FTP). This brought my site back!! Yay for happy endings!

 

Disclaimer: I am not a profession web developer or hosting support provider, the above article outlines my personal experience and how I solved the error I encountered. If you unsure of the error you are experiencing or not familiar with the above terms, you will want to reach out to your hosting provider.