How to Recover Your WordPress Site After a Failed Update (Web HosTech Guide)

Introduction

You hit “Update” on your WordPress site—and boom. Suddenly, your website is acting weird, pages won’t load, or worse, everything’s down. It’s a frustrating moment, especially when you run a business or blog that depends on being online 24/7. At Web Hostech, we understand how crucial uptime is and how painful it is when an update causes chaos.

While WordPress updates are important for performance, security, and new features, they can sometimes lead to plugin conflicts, theme incompatibility, or fatal errors. If you’re staring at a white screen or an error message right now, don’t panic. You’re in the right place.

We’ve created this detailed, beginner-friendly guide to help you restore your website quickly and safely—with or without backups.

Step 1 – Identify What Went Wrong

Let’s start with diagnosis before jumping into fixes. Think of this as asking, “Doctor, where does it hurt?”

• Can you access the WordPress dashboard? If yes, the issue might be a theme or plugin conflict. If no, the core WordPress files might be affected.
• Is the front-end showing errors or blank pages? Then something broke during the update process—often it’s a plugin or theme.
• Did you update WordPress core, a plugin, or a theme? Knowing this helps pinpoint the root cause.

Web Hostech customers can use their control panel’s error logs or the dashboard logs to see what happened in the background during the update. Look for any recent changes to isolate what went wrong.

The goal here is to narrow down whether it’s a plugin, theme, or WordPress core update that caused the issue.

Step 2 – Enable WP_DEBUG Mode

Not sure what’s breaking the site? Turn on WordPress debugging to expose the problem.

To enable WP_DEBUG, follow these steps via Web Hostech’s File Manager or through an FTP client like FileZilla:

1. Open the wp-config.php file in your root directory.
2. Locate the line that says: phpCopyEditdefine( 'WP_DEBUG', false );
3. Change it to: phpCopyEditdefine( 'WP_DEBUG', true );

Reload your site. Now, instead of a blank screen, WordPress will tell you exactly what the error is—usually pointing to a specific plugin or theme file. Make a note of this before moving forward.

After you’re done, make sure to set it back to false so your visitors don’t see internal errors.

Tip from Web Hostech: Our customers can enable debugging from the Advanced Tools section in the hosting panel with just one click—no coding required.

Step 3 – Restore a Backup (If You Have One)

This is where the value of regular backups shines. If you backed up your site before the update (either manually or using a plugin), you can restore it in minutes.

Here’s how:

• Using a plugin like UpdraftPlus or Jetpack? Log into your dashboard, go to the backup section, and click “Restore.”
• Using Web Hostech hosting? We’ve got your back. Our plans include automated daily backups. Simply access your Backup Manager from your cPanel or hosting dashboard, select a date, and click Restore.

Didn’t back up? No worries. Keep going—there are still ways to fix the issue manually.

But moving forward, make it a habit to back up your site regularly—or let Web Hostech do it for you.

Step 4 – Access Your Site via FTP or File Manager

If your site is down and you can’t access the WordPress dashboard, it’s time to go behind the scenes using FTP or your hosting file manager.

• FTP Access: Use tools like FileZilla and log in with credentials found in your Web Hostech control panel.
• File Manager: If you’re hosted with us, just log into your hosting dashboard and launch the built-in File Manager—a simpler way to manage files without third-party tools.

Once inside:

• Go to the public_html directory or wherever your WordPress site is installed.
• From here, you can edit files, disable plugins, switch themes, or even manually upload a previous version of WordPress.

This access is essential for fixing update issues, especially when your dashboard is inaccessible.

Step 5 – Deactivate All Plugins

A faulty plugin is often the culprit when WordPress breaks after an update.

Here’s how to disable all plugins at once using Web Hostech’s File Manager or via FTP:

1. Navigate to wp-content.
2. Find the plugins folder.
3. Rename it to something like plugins-temp.

This will deactivate all plugins without deleting them.

Now, try visiting your site again. If it loads correctly, then one of your plugins caused the problem.

Next, do this:

1. Rename the folder back to plugins.
2. Open the folder and rename each plugin folder one by one.
3. Refresh your site after each rename until the error returns—this tells you which plugin is the troublemaker.

Once you identify the faulty plugin, you can:

• Delete it.
• Replace it with an alternative.
• Contact the plugin developer for a fix.