WordPress stuck in maintenance mode — 30-second fix

Every time WordPress runs a core, plugin, or theme update, it creates an empty file called .maintenance in the site root. That file tells WordPress to show the "briefly unavailable" message to visitors while files are being swapped. When the update finishes, WordPress deletes the file automatically and the site comes back.

If the update is interrupted — you close the tab, your connection drops, the PHP process hits a timeout, or your host kills the process — WordPress never gets to the cleanup step. The .maintenance file stays. Every visitor sees the error until you delete it manually.

• 1. Connect to your site via SFTP (FileZilla, Cyberduck, Transmit) or your host's File Manager (cPanel, Plesk, MyKinsta).
• 2. Navigate to the WordPress root folder — the folder that contains wp-config.php, wp-login.php, and the wp-content directory.
• 3. Enable "show hidden files" in your SFTP client. The .maintenance file starts with a dot so it's hidden by default. In FileZilla: Server menu → "Force showing hidden files".
• 4. Delete the file called .maintenance. Just that one file — don't touch anything else.
• 5. Reload your site in a fresh browser tab. It's back.

If the update was still running when you deleted .maintenance, some plugin or core files may be half-swapped. The site loads but you might see PHP warnings or a specific plugin might be broken.

Log into wp-admin. Go to Dashboard → Updates. Re-run any update that was in progress. WordPress will finish what it started and the warnings clear.

If wp-admin itself throws a critical error after deleting .maintenance, follow our critical-error rescue guide — the fix is either force-disabling the plugin that was being updated (rename the folder via SFTP) or restoring the affected plugin files manually.

Move updates off cheap shared hosting. The #1 cause of interrupted updates is a PHP timeout on undersized hosts. If your host's PHP max_execution_time is 30 seconds and a plugin update takes 45, you'll hit this every month.

Put Cloudflare or Bunny CDN in front of the site. It absorbs the connection while the origin is briefly slow during an update, reducing timeout risk.

Increase PHP timeouts if your host allows: add 'set_time_limit(300);' to a mu-plugin or ask support to raise max_execution_time to 300 seconds site-wide.