Fix a site stuck in maintenance mode

If your site shows "Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute" and does not recover, an update stopped part-way through. Applies to all WordPress sites.

WordPress enters maintenance mode automatically whenever it updates core, a theme or a plugin, and leaves it as soon as the update finishes. Normally that takes a couple of seconds and nobody notices.

It gets stuck when the update is interrupted:

• The browser tab was closed mid-update.
• A large batch of plugins or themes was updated at once and the request timed out.
• A compatibility problem caused the update to fail part-way.

Delete the .maintenance file

While in maintenance mode, WordPress keeps a file called .maintenance in the site's root folder — the one containing wp-admin and wp-config.php. Deleting it ends maintenance mode immediately.

1. Connect using cPanel's File Manager or an FTP client.
2. Open the site's root folder, normally public_html.
3. Enable hidden files. In File Manager this is Settings → Show Hidden Files (dotfiles); in FTP clients it is usually a "show hidden files" option. The leading dot means the file is hidden by default.
4. Delete .maintenance.

The site should load immediately. Clear any caching plugin and your CDN, or the maintenance page may still be served from cache.

Then finish the update

Deleting the file ends maintenance mode — it does not complete the update. The site is now running a part-updated set of files.

Go to Dashboard → Updates and run it again. This time:

• Update in small batches rather than selecting everything.
• Leave the tab open until it finishes.

If the update fails repeatedly, the cause is a compatibility problem rather than a timeout. Enable WP_DEBUG to see the actual error.

Related

• Enable WP_DEBUG
• Reset WordPress permalinks