Most of the WordPress users who keep up with consistent updates have more likely faced the ‘Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute’ message at least once. When your site is stuck in maintenance mode, it is usually because WordPress core, plugins, or themes failed to update. This message indicates that your site is in maintenance mode and causes your website to be inaccessible.
However, you do not need to worry because fixing this error doesn’t require technical expertise. It only takes a couple of minutes to fix ‘Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute’.
In this article, we’ll look at the main causes of the WordPress maintenance mode error. We’ll also show you a quick fix for this issue and share some tips to help you avoid the same problem in the future. Let’s get started!
What is ‘Briefly Unavailable for Scheduled Maintenance’?
During the update, WordPress will create a temporary .maintenance file on your site. This file will put your website into maintenance mode and display the ‘Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute’. message.
The message is displayed to prevent your website from appearing broken on the front-end. That’s a WordPress-generated notification that notifies any visitors about what’s happening with your website. So in actuality, the message is not an error, it is a notification page.
The process is so seamless that you never even notice a change in your site most of the time. Depending on how many files need to be replaced, it may take anywhere from a couple of seconds to a few minutes. Once the updates are done, WordPress automatically deletes the .maintenance file, and the message disappears from your site. If you keep seeing this message no matter how many times you come back to your website, there’s a good chance that your WordPress site got stuck in maintenance mode.
Why Does The ‘Briefly Unavailable for Scheduled Maintenance’ Error occure?
There are different reasons why your WordPress site might be stuck in maintenance mode, with the most common ones being:
If Update was Interrupted:
If you have closed the browser window in the middle of an update the script gets stopped. It causes the process interruption. Disabling the maintenance mode is the last step of the update process. That’s why it’s essential to wait for the update to finish before running any other commands.
Low Memory:
PHP scripts run every process in WordPress, including the updates. So, when you’re low on storage, the scripts running the installation may fail to delete the .maintenance file.
Slow Server Response:
WordPress has a limit on how long a script can run. If the server is slow to respond, the update script will timeout before disabling the maintenance mode.
Assigning to Many Update:
If you update a ton of different components like themes and plugins at the same time. Some processes went wrong and caused an issue.
Compatibility Issues:
If a theme or plugin update is not compatible with your current version of WordPress, it may cause a bug that stops the update process early.
Any one of these tiny mismanagements may be the reason you’re seeing ‘Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute’. Luckily, there are some quick and simple fixes to this error. We will walk you through those ways to fix this glitch and return your website to its stable state.
Fix The Erorr by Deleting .maintenance File:
As we told before, WordPress creates a temporary .maintenance file during the update process. If you see the ‘Briefly Unavailable for Scheduled Maintenance Check Back in a Minute’ message for a long time that means the .maintenance file is still there. To fix the ‘Briefly Unavailable for Scheduled Maintenance Check Back in a Minute’ message, you must delete that file. Now, we will show you two different methods to delete the file.
1. Delete .maintenance File Using FTP Client:
To access your site’s root directory via FTP, you’ll have to use an FTP client such as FileZilla to facilitate the connection. Once you’re connected to your server, a list of your site’s files will be found under the public_html folder.
The .maintenance file is usually hidden from FTP clients. To view the file, go to the ‘Server’ menu and click on ‘Force showing hidden files from the menu bar.
Once you find it, right-click on the ‘.maintenance’ file and select ‘Delete’.
2. Delete .maintenance File with cPanel:
If your hosting provider uses cPanel, you can access your site’s root directory and delete the ‘.maintenance’ file through the ‘File Manager’ feature. Just log into cPanel and select ‘File Manager’ under the ‘FILES’ section.
Find your default WordPress directory on the left and navigate to it. When in your main WordPress folder, you may not see your ‘.maintenance’ file. This is because most servers hide dot configuration files. Show hidden files by clicking on Settings in the top right corner, check the ‘Show Hidden Files(dotfiles)’ option, and click on the ‘Save’ button.
When you locate the .maintenance file, right-click on it, and hit ‘Delete’.
After deleting the .maintenance file using any of these two methods, make sure to clear the cache and reload a page on your site. If the page is present, without any additional issues, it means that the error was solved.
Solving the Error by Editing the wp-activate.php File:
If the error is still here, it could mean that installation mode is somehow still active in WordPress. You need to change the ‘wp-activate.php’ file found in the root WordPress directory to fix it. You can do this using an FTP client or via cPanel, as previously shown.
For that, either open the file using your file manager or download it on your computer using FTP.
Next, you need to find the following code.
define ('WP_INSTALLING', true);
Change the true to false.
define ('WP_INSTALLING', false);
So your code should look like this afterward.
After that, you need to save the changes and upload the file to the same directory to override the one currently on the server. Clear the browser cache afterward and try to access your page again.
How to Customize Maintenance Mode Notification?
It’s a good idea to give your visitor the appropriate information that what is happening on your site. Customize the appearance of the maintenance mode with the appropriate information by showing a message. Many will suggest you plugin for customizing the maintenance mode notification but I believe the less plugin, the better your site performance is. So, we are showing you how you can manually customize the maintenance mode notification.
Simply create a new file called ‘maintenance.php’ on your desktop and paste this code inside it:
<?php
$protocol = $_SERVER["SERVER_PROTOCOL"];
if ( 'HTTP/1.1' != $protocol && 'HTTP/1.0' != $protocol )
$protocol = 'HTTP/1.0';
header( "$protocol 503 Service Unavailable", true, 503 );
header( 'Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8' );
?>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<body>
<h1>We are updating the site, please check back in 30 minutes.</h1>
</body>
</html>
<?php die(); ?>
Next, upload this file to your WordPress site’s wp-content directory.
Now, every time your site is in maintenance mode, WordPress will show this page to your visitors. You can change the message according to your needs.
You can any time come across an unexpected error message in WordPress and it is concerning. We reviewed the possible reasons and ways to solve them and hope it helped you learn how to fix the briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance error in WordPress. If you have any questions regarding the problem, leave the comments below.
To know about more errors and their solution stay connected with our WordPress Tips page. You will get many articles like ‘How To Fix The HTTP Image Upload Error In WordPress?’ and ‘Some More WordPress Configuration Tricks’ there.
Most of the WordPress users who keep up with consistent updates have more likely faced the ‘Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute’ message at least once. When your site is stuck in maintenance mode, it is usually because WordPress core, plugins, or themes failed to update. This message indicates that your site is in maintenance mode and causes your website to be inaccessible.
However, you do not need to worry because fixing this error doesn’t require technical expertise. It only takes a couple of minutes to fix ‘Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute’.
In this article, we’ll look at the main causes of the WordPress maintenance mode error. We’ll also show you a quick fix for this issue and share some tips to help you avoid the same problem in the future. Let’s get started!
What is ‘Briefly Unavailable for Scheduled Maintenance’?
During the update, WordPress will create a temporary .maintenance file on your site. This file will put your website into maintenance mode and display the ‘Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute’. message.
The message is displayed to prevent your website from appearing broken on the front-end. That’s a WordPress-generated notification that notifies any visitors about what’s happening with your website. So in actuality, the message is not an error, it is a notification page.
The process is so seamless that you never even notice a change in your site most of the time. Depending on how many files need to be replaced, it may take anywhere from a couple of seconds to a few minutes. Once the updates are done, WordPress automatically deletes the .maintenance file, and the message disappears from your site. If you keep seeing this message no matter how many times you come back to your website, there’s a good chance that your WordPress site got stuck in maintenance mode.
Why Does The ‘Briefly Unavailable for Scheduled Maintenance’ Error occure?
There are different reasons why your WordPress site might be stuck in maintenance mode, with the most common ones being:
If Update was Interrupted:
If you have closed the browser window in the middle of an update the script gets stopped. It causes the process interruption. Disabling the maintenance mode is the last step of the update process. That’s why it’s essential to wait for the update to finish before running any other commands.
Low Memory:
PHP scripts run every process in WordPress, including the updates. So, when you’re low on storage, the scripts running the installation may fail to delete the .maintenance file.
Slow Server Response:
WordPress has a limit on how long a script can run. If the server is slow to respond, the update script will timeout before disabling the maintenance mode.
Assigning to Many Update:
If you update a ton of different components like themes and plugins at the same time. Some processes went wrong and caused an issue.
Compatibility Issues:
If a theme or plugin update is not compatible with your current version of WordPress, it may cause a bug that stops the update process early.
Any one of these tiny mismanagements may be the reason you’re seeing ‘Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute’. Luckily, there are some quick and simple fixes to this error. We will walk you through those ways to fix this glitch and return your website to its stable state.
Fix The Erorr by Deleting .maintenance File:
As we told before, WordPress creates a temporary .maintenance file during the update process. If you see the ‘Briefly Unavailable for Scheduled Maintenance Check Back in a Minute’ message for a long time that means the .maintenance file is still there. To fix the ‘Briefly Unavailable for Scheduled Maintenance Check Back in a Minute’ message, you must delete that file. Now, we will show you two different methods to delete the file.
1. Delete .maintenance File Using FTP Client:
To access your site’s root directory via FTP, you’ll have to use an FTP client such as FileZilla to facilitate the connection. Once you’re connected to your server, a list of your site’s files will be found under the public_html folder.
The .maintenance file is usually hidden from FTP clients. To view the file, go to the ‘Server’ menu and click on ‘Force showing hidden files from the menu bar.
Once you find it, right-click on the ‘.maintenance’ file and select ‘Delete’.
2. Delete .maintenance File with cPanel:
If your hosting provider uses cPanel, you can access your site’s root directory and delete the ‘.maintenance’ file through the ‘File Manager’ feature. Just log into cPanel and select ‘File Manager’ under the ‘FILES’ section.
Find your default WordPress directory on the left and navigate to it. When in your main WordPress folder, you may not see your ‘.maintenance’ file. This is because most servers hide dot configuration files. Show hidden files by clicking on Settings in the top right corner, check the ‘Show Hidden Files(dotfiles)’ option, and click on the ‘Save’ button.
When you locate the .maintenance file, right-click on it, and hit ‘Delete’.
After deleting the .maintenance file using any of these two methods, make sure to clear the cache and reload a page on your site. If the page is present, without any additional issues, it means that the error was solved.
Solving the Error by Editing the wp-activate.php File:
If the error is still here, it could mean that installation mode is somehow still active in WordPress. You need to change the ‘wp-activate.php’ file found in the root WordPress directory to fix it. You can do this using an FTP client or via cPanel, as previously shown.
For that, either open the file using your file manager or download it on your computer using FTP.
Next, you need to find the following code.
Change the true to false.
So your code should look like this afterward.
After that, you need to save the changes and upload the file to the same directory to override the one currently on the server. Clear the browser cache afterward and try to access your page again.
How to Customize Maintenance Mode Notification?
It’s a good idea to give your visitor the appropriate information that what is happening on your site. Customize the appearance of the maintenance mode with the appropriate information by showing a message. Many will suggest you plugin for customizing the maintenance mode notification but I believe the less plugin, the better your site performance is. So, we are showing you how you can manually customize the maintenance mode notification.
Simply create a new file called ‘maintenance.php’ on your desktop and paste this code inside it:
Next, upload this file to your WordPress site’s wp-content directory.
Now, every time your site is in maintenance mode, WordPress will show this page to your visitors. You can change the message according to your needs.
You can any time come across an unexpected error message in WordPress and it is concerning. We reviewed the possible reasons and ways to solve them and hope it helped you learn how to fix the briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance error in WordPress. If you have any questions regarding the problem, leave the comments below.
To know about more errors and their solution stay connected with our WordPress Tips page. You will get many articles like ‘How To Fix The HTTP Image Upload Error In WordPress?’ and ‘Some More WordPress Configuration Tricks’ there.
Sidratul Sohrat