How to Fix the Briefly Unavailable for Scheduled Maintenance Error in WordPress
If you are seeing the ‘briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance’ error message, it means the WordPress core, themes or plugins are updating. These are the only two times when this message pops up. There are times when the update fails and you are left stuck with the maintenance mode. How do you fix this problem? This article is meant to help you fix this error.
Why does the error occur?
The briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance is not an error but a notification page. When updating, WordPress will download the update files to your server then extracts them and installs the update. Your website will be put on maintenance mode during this period and the scheduled maintenance page will be displayed. The notification is only there for a couple of seconds. After the update, the notification page will be deleted by WordPress automatically.
There are, however, times when the notification page stays on longer than a few seconds. This happens when there is a slow WordPress hosting server response or a low memory issue. In this case the update might be timed out; interrupting the process. When this happens, WordPress doesn’t take your site out of the maintenance mode. Your site will continue being on maintenance mode notice until you fix it manually.
How to fix the maintenance mode error
To get your site from the maintenance mode, you just need to delete the .maintenance file from the root folder of your website using FTP. If you cannot find the .maintenance file in the WordPress root directory, you need to check if the FTP client is checked to show hidden files. If you are using Filezilla, you can force it to show the hidden files by going to Server>>Force showing hidden files.
After removing the .maintenance file, you site will get out of the maintenance mode. The briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance error will go away. If you don’t know how to use the FTP client, you can go to the file manager in the WordPress hosting control panel then delete the .maintenance file within the file manager.
How to avoid the maintenance mode error
Fixing the error is one thing but how can you avoid it in the future. The easiest way to avoid the error is to upgrade to a higher hosting plan to avoid the slow server response or low memory problem which is the root cause of the error. You should also consider using the managed WordPress hosting companies which offer better hosting performance. Alternatively, you can update your theme and plugin one at a time.