How to Fix “Briefly Unavailable for Scheduled Maintenance” Issue After Site Update

Introduction

After updating your WordPress site, you may encounter a message stating “Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute.” This typically occurs when a site update is interrupted, leaving your site stuck in maintenance mode. Fortunately, you can resolve this issue directly through your Staq Panel and sFTP client, like FileZilla. Here’s how to do it:

Step-by-step guide:

• Go to the site’s Staq Panel inside the Staq dashboard.
• Click on the ‘FTP‘ option in the panel to retrieve the FTP details for your site:

• Log into your chosen FTP client (e.g., FileZilla) using the sFTP details you obtained in the previous step. This is the how to access sFTP knowledge base article for detailed access
• Once you’ve successfully logged in, in your FTP client, navigate to the WordPress root folder of your site.
• Inside the WordPress root folder, look for a file named ‘.maintenance‘.
• Right-click the ‘.maintenance’ file and select ‘Delete’. Confirm the deletion if prompted.
• Refresh your website in your web browser.

By deleting the ‘.maintenance’ file, you effectively take your site out of maintenance mode. After refreshing your website, it should load normally, and you should regain access to your WordPress admin area.

Conclusion:

Being stuck in maintenance mode can be a hassle, but it’s a relatively easy problem to fix. Always ensure your updates complete without interruption to avoid this issue in the future. If you continue to face issues, don’t hesitate to reach out to our support team for further assistance.