How to disable WordPress plugins

The most common way to disable plugins in WordPress is to do so through the website admin dashboard.

You will be redirected to the list of the plugins. Here you can check the number of the installed plugins and their statuses.
Each active plugin has Deactivate button beneath. Click on it and plugin will be turned off.

If due to some reason you are unable to access WordPress admin dashboard, you can deactivate the plugins in the alternative ways.

Via File Manager

Log into your cPanel, navigate to Files section and click on File Manager

Once inside, go to your WordPress website directory root. Navigate to wp-content/plugins folder and find the plugin you need to disable.
You can simply rename the plugin folder to any other name and save the changes.

Make sure you remember the initial name of the plugin folder in case you need it back on at some point.

NOTE: some plugins, e.g. caching ones, are hardcoded and folder renaming will not disable them.
In such cases you will need to disable the plugin in the database.

Via database

Log into your cPanel, navigate to Databases section and click on phpMyAdmin

To check what database is in use by your WordPress website, check wp-config.php file located in the website root

Expand the list of your databases and click on the one assigned to your WordPress installation. Navigate to the upper menu bar and click on SQL

Insert the following query and click Go

SELECT *FROM wp_options WHERE option_name = ‘active_plugins’;

Once the query is executed, click on Edit

You will see the following output:

a:4:
{
i:0;s:19:”akismet/akismet.php”;
i:1;s:36:”contact-form-plugin/contact_form.php”;
i:2;s:45:”limit-login-attempts/limit-login-attempts.php”; i:3;s:29:”use-any-font/use-any-font.php”;
}

Number 4 in the beginning shows the total amount of active plugins. They are numbered from i:0 to i:n-1, where n is 4 in our case.

To deactivate plugin, simply remove the corresponding line and save the changes. Make sure the numbering and n-value of the plugins are corrected. For example, if you need to turn off Akismet, the output to save will look like:

a:3:
{
i:0;s:36:”contact-form-plugin/contact_form.php”;
i:1;s:45:”limit-login-attempts/limit-login-attempts.php”;
i:2;s:29:”use-any-font/use-any-font.php”;
}

NOTE: to deactivate all plugins simply erase the code from the box.

Click on Go. Your plugin is disabled now.

Important! The final output is displayed *in a single row* and should be saved in the same way. We have divided it into several ones for your convenience only. Thus, we advise to copy the code to any TXT editor, edit it and then copy paste back in one line.

This is it!

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