There are many reasons why this error can occur, for our customers, below is the most common error. If this solution does not work for you, please submit a ticket.
Issue: Your WordPress website auto updated to a major version and now you can't access the admin interface because every time you click Update Database you either reload the page or see a 404. Solution:
- First, login to your cPanel account. If you aren't sure how to do that, follow this article here.
- Next, locate the "Files" section of your cPanel and click "File Manager". Alternatively, you can use the search bar in the top right to search for "File Manager".
- This will open in a new tab, do not close the old tab where cPanel is!
- Next, you will need to navigate to your website's root directory. If you only have one domain on your account, then this will be "public_html".
- If you installed your website as an addon-domain or a sub-domain, it will be the domain name. So "sub.example.com" or just "example.com".
- Inside this folder, navigate to "wp-content" > "plugins". You should now see a list of all of your plugins.
- Find the plugin "hide-my-wp" and rename it to "hide-my-wp.DISABLED".
- DO NOT DELETE THIS FOLDER, this WILL NOT uninstall the plugin. Additionally, this plugin is vital in securing your WordPress website and your website could be left vulnerable to hackers without it.
- If you do not see this plugin in your plugins folder, then this error is not caused by this plugin. However, it could be caused by another security plugin or a caching plugin. Please submit a ticket and we can help you out.
- We aren't done just yet. If you know your websites login information, then visit your website's login page in a fresh browser tab.
- Note, it is possible that your login URL will reset to the WordPress default of /wp-login.php. In that case just add /wp-login.php to the end of your websites URL and you will find the login page.
- If you are able to get logged with this method, then skip to step 8.
- It's unlikely you'll be able to use your standard login method. In that case we can force login. Don't close any of your browser tabs just yet, you should have left the cPanel tab open from step 2. Switch to that tab now, and on the left sidebar click "WordPress Manager by Softaculous". On this next page, you should see a list of your WordPress websites. Click the "Login" button beside the website you'd like to access. This will start a force login to your website.
- Additionally, don't close this tab when you leave, we will need to access our files again.
- You should now be seeing the upgrade database again. Go ahead and click it and allow the upgrade to continue. If you have any major issues from this upgrade, you can always load a backup using Jetbackup in cPanel or contact our support team for help. Once the upgrade completes, do not continue just yet, we need to enable our security plugin again. To do so, switch back to your file manager tab from step 2/7. Rename "hide-my-wp.DISABLED" back to "hide-my-wp". You can close this tab now.
- Back on the WordPress page, you can now continue and you should be redirected to your website Dashboard. That said, it is possible for you to get a 404 at this point, but the upgrade is already completed so you just need to log back in the way you normally do.
If you had any issue following the steps above and were unable to complete this fix, please contact a member of our support department by raising a support ticket.
