Sometimes WordPress gets stuck in Maintenance Mode. Visitors to the page will see a “Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute.” when this happens.
WordPress usually gets stuck in maintenance mode because the upgrade/update page was closed while the update was in the process of running.
To get out of Maintenance Mode, try these steps:
- Access the files to your website. This can usually be done by connecting to your web server via FTP. Some web host providers may provide a “File Manager” option you can also use from CPanel.
- Locate the .maintenance file in the root of the website directory. If you don’t see it, make sure you have things set to view hidden files. If you’re using an FTP client, you can often find a setting that will allow this in the settings.
- Delete the .maintenance file.
Hopefully, after performing these steps things will return to working as normal. You may have to attempt to perform the upgrade again if it didn’t complete successfully.