WordPress owes much of its reach to plugins: whatever a site needs, there is usually a plugin for it, and that flexibility has drawn every kind of business onto the platform. The flip side is that plugins are also the most common source of errors, slowdowns and conflicts, which is why knowing how to switch one off, quickly and in more than one way, is basic site maintenance rather than an advanced skill.
You deactivate a plugin to troubleshoot an error, to test whether it is slowing the site, to remove a feature you no longer want, or because an update broke something. This guide covers four methods, from the ordinary dashboard click to the ones you need when the dashboard itself will not load, and starts by clearing up the difference between deactivating and uninstalling.
Last updated: 2026 for WordPress 6.8. Menu labels match the current admin.
The plugin issues a busy site can have
It is tempting to think a simple site does not need to keep tabs on its plugins. In practice every site accumulates them: a form plugin here, a slider there, a tracking snippet, a pop-up, a social share bar. Each one loads code on every request, sets its own cookies, and needs updating. The more visitors a site handles, the more each unnecessary plugin costs in speed and in the resource limits shared hosting imposes.
Visitors rarely notice a feature you added, but they do notice a page that takes four seconds to load or a checkout that errors out. So the useful habit is periodic review: which plugins are still doing a job that matters, which duplicate another, and which have not been updated by their authors in over a year. Deactivate the doubtful ones, watch the site for a week, then delete what you did not miss. A shorter plugin list is faster, safer and easier to troubleshoot when something does go wrong.
Deactivation And Uninstallation Of WordPress Plugins
The two are often confused, and the difference matters when you are deciding what to do with a plugin’s settings and data.
Deactivation switches the plugin off. WordPress stops loading its code, its menus disappear from the dashboard and its features stop working on the front end, but the files stay in wp-content/plugins and its settings stay in the database. Click Activate and everything returns exactly as it was. This is what you want for troubleshooting and testing.
Uninstallation (the Delete link, which only appears once a plugin is deactivated) removes the files from the server and, if the plugin author has written an uninstall routine, its settings and database tables too. Not every plugin cleans up after itself, which is why the database of an old site is full of orphaned option rows. To use a deleted plugin again you reinstall it and, usually, reconfigure it. So deactivate when you are unsure, and delete only when you are certain the plugin is gone for good.
Methods To Disable A Plugin
There are four practical ways to deactivate a plugin. The first two use the dashboard and cover normal maintenance. The last two work from outside WordPress and are for the situations where a plugin has taken the dashboard down with it. Before any of them, take a backup if the site is live and you are about to change more than one plugin; our WordPress troubleshooting guide explains why that matters.
One shortcut first: if a plugin causes a fatal error, WordPress 5.2 and later puts the site into recovery mode and emails the administrator a link. Follow it and you are logged in with the faulty plugin already paused, so you can deactivate it normally. Check your inbox before reaching for phpMyAdmin.
Deactivating Single WordPress Plugin
Log in to the WordPress admin area and click Plugins in the left menu, which opens the Installed Plugins list. Find the plugin you want to turn off; on a long list, use the search box at the top right or the Active filter above the table.
Under the plugin’s name you will see a Deactivate link. Click it and the plugin is switched off immediately; the page reloads and the row moves to the Inactive filter with Activate and Delete links in its place. That is all. The plugin stays installed, WordPress simply no longer loads it, and one click on Activate brings it back with its settings intact. If the plugin had auto-updates enabled, they continue while it is inactive, which is what you want for security.
Bulk Deactivation Of WordPress Plugins
When troubleshooting, you often want everything off at once so you can reintroduce plugins one at a time. On the same Installed Plugins page, tick the checkbox in the table header next to “Plugin” to select every plugin in the list, or tick individual boxes for a subset. Then open the Bulk actions dropdown above the table, choose Deactivate, and click Apply.
All selected plugins are deactivated in one step. To find a culprit, reactivate them one by one, loading the problem page after each, until the error or slowdown returns. The last plugin you activated is involved; leave it off and continue with the rest, since two plugins can conflict with each other. If the site is live and you would rather not switch things off for visitors, the Health Check & Troubleshooting plugin provides a troubleshooting mode that deactivates plugins for your browser session only.
Deactivation Of WordPress Plugins Via phpMyAdmin
When the dashboard will not load at all, you can deactivate every plugin by editing one value in the database. Open phpMyAdmin from your hosting panel (in cPanel it is under Databases) and select your WordPress database in the left column. If you are unsure which one, the name is in wp-config.php as DB_NAME.
Find the options table. Its default name is wp_options, but many installs use a different prefix (wpxy_options, for example); the prefix is also in wp-config.php as $table_prefix. Click Browse next to it, then use the search or filter box to locate the row where option_name is active_plugins. Click Edit on that row.
The option_value field contains a serialised PHP array listing every active plugin. Copy it into a text file first so you can restore it later. Then replace the whole value with a:0:{}, which is an empty array, and click Go. Every plugin is now deactivated. Load the site; if it comes back, log in and reactivate plugins one at a time from the dashboard. Do not try to remove a single plugin from the serialised string by hand, because the array’s counts and string lengths must match exactly or WordPress will discard the whole value.
Deactivation Of WordPress Plugins Using SFTP
The file-based method is the most beginner-friendly of the emergency options and needs no database work. It suits the classic lock-out: a plugin update has broken the login page, or a security plugin has blocked your own IP. You need an SFTP client (FileZilla, Cyberduck or WinSCP) and the SFTP credentials from your hosting panel, or you can use the host’s built-in file manager instead. Prefer SFTP over plain FTP; it encrypts the connection and every host supports it.
Connect, open the WordPress root directory and go into wp-content. You will see the plugins folder. Right-click it, choose Rename, and call it something like plugins-off. WordPress looks for plugins at the original path, finds nothing, and treats every plugin as deactivated.
Load the site and log in. On the Plugins page you will see notices that each plugin has been deactivated because its file could not be found. Now rename the folder back to plugins; the plugins reappear in the list as inactive, with settings intact, and you can reactivate them one at a time to find the one at fault. To disable just one plugin this way, rename only that plugin’s subfolder inside plugins rather than the whole directory.
If you have shell access, WP-CLI does the same without a file manager: wp plugin deactivate --all switches everything off, and wp plugin deactivate plugin-slug targets one plugin. Deactivating plugins to test performance is routine on well-run sites of every size, and the SFTP and WP-CLI methods make it possible even when the dashboard is not.
Which Canyon theme fits
Themes that depend on bundled plugins turn every deactivation test into a broken layout. Ours require none: switch off every plugin and the theme still renders correctly, which is exactly what you want when you are isolating a problem. For a blog, Bloge; for a company site, Business Way. Both are maintained for WordPress 6.8 and PHP 8.2+.
Final Words
Deactivating a plugin is a one-click task when the dashboard works and a five-minute task when it does not. Use the dashboard for everyday maintenance, bulk deactivation for troubleshooting, and phpMyAdmin or SFTP when you are locked out. Whichever route you take, remember that deactivation keeps settings and deletion may not, and that a plugin you have not reactivated in a month is one you can probably delete. If a plugin needs to come back afterwards, our guide on installing WordPress plugins covers every method.
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