How to Fix Briefly Unavailable for Scheduled Maintenance Error in WordPress

Briefly Unavailable for Scheduled Maintenance Error is displayed while updating plugins, themes or WordPress core. This message will disappear within few seconds or minutes based on the speed of your hosting server. In case of failure to update the plugins or themes, you will see this message forever, until this error is fixed.

 

Why you will get Briefly Unavailable for Scheduled Maintenance Error

WordPress creates .maintenance file while updating plugins, themes or WordPress core for displaying a message “Briefly Unavailable for Scheduled Maintenance” to intimate the user. During this process, WordPress downloads the files to server from repository, extracts these files and installs these updates in file structure and database updates.

After successful update, WordPress deletes this .maintenance file to remove the message and your website works normally as before. In case of failure with any of server issues like timed out, memory issues. WordPress fails to remove this file from the server, in this scenario you will see this error all the time.

How to fix Briefly Unavailable for Scheduled Maintenance Error

It is a simple error to fix, you just have to log in to your web server using cPanel, FTP or SSH and delete maintenance file. By default, you won’t be able to see this file because it’s hidden field. You should enable the option to see the hidden files. In this tutorial, you will learn how you can fix this issue step by step.

• Fix Briefly Unavailable for Scheduled Maintenance Error with cPanel
• Fix Briefly Unavailable for Scheduled Maintenance Error with FTP
• Fix Briefly Unavailable for Scheduled Maintenance Error with SSH

 

1. Fix Briefly Unavailable for Scheduled Maintenance Error with cPanel

If you are maintaining the website for some time, then you will be aware of cPanel.

1. Login into cPanel with login credentials you got from the service provider.

2. Open File Manager after logging into cPanel, you can find File Manager under Files Section

 

3. Navigate to public_html directory, if you have installed WordPress in your root directory. You will see all the WordPress files here or else navigate to WordPress root directory.

 

4. You won’t be able to see the .maintenance file until you enable to see hidden files. In File Manager page you can find settings button on right side top section. Click on the settings button.

5. After clicking on the settings button, a popup window will be displayed. Select “Show Hidden Files (dotfiles)” option and click on save button. After that you can see the .maintenance file, just select it and delete this file.

6. After deleting the .maintenance file, reload your website in the browser. Now you should see your actual website instead of “Briefly Unavailable for Scheduled Maintenance” Message.

 

If you don’t have cPanel access don’t worry you can follow any of the two methods using FTP or SSH.

 

2. Fix Briefly Unavailable for Scheduled Maintenance Error with FTP

If you don’t have access to cPanel, you can fix this issue with FTP program like FileZilla.

1. Open FTP program and log in to the server with login credentials provided by website owner or service provider.

2. Navigate to the public_html directory and then to root of your WordPress installation.

3. In this WordPress root directory, you can see .maintenance file. Just select this file and delete it from the FTP program.

4. After deleting the .maintenance file, you will be able to access the website.

 

3. Fix Briefly Unavailable for Scheduled Maintenance Error with SSH

If you are using VPS server or on a Dedicated server with SSH access. Follow these instructions to get your website up and running from removing this “Briefly Unavailable” message.

1. Login to your server with SSH login credentials using applications like putty in windows or terminal in mac.

2. Navigate to root of your WordPress installation “/var/www/html/” directory. If you are cPanel based server navigate to “public_html” directory.

3. After navigating to WordPress root directory list all the files with this command “ls -ali”. You will see the list of all the files, you can .maintenance file.

4. Just delete this .maintenance file with this command “rm .maintenance”. After executing this command, load your website in the browser you should see your website.