Enable & disable WordPress plugins from the command line
Sometimes installing or upgrading a WordPress plugin breaks both the frontend of your website and the WordPress admin too, making it impossible to disable the plugin with the user interface. If you have command line access, WP-CLI to the rescue!
Downland and install WP-CLI
Go to wp-cli.org to download and install the command line tool for managing WordPress.
List plugins
To list the WordPress plugins you have available, both active and inactive, run this:
wp plugin list
You’ll get something like this:
+---------------------------------+----------+-----------+---------+ | name| status| update| version | +---------------------------------+----------+-----------+---------+ | akismet| active| none| 3.1.5| | wp-conditional-captcha| active| none| 3.7.1| | feedburner_feedsmith_plugin_2.3 | active| none| 2.3.1| | gd-star-rating| inactive | none| 1.9.17| | outbound-link-manager| active| none| 1.11| | sexybookmarks| active| available | 7.6.1.9 | | tinymce-advanced| active| none| 4.2.5| | wptouch-pro| active| none| 2.7| | wordpress-seo| active| available | 2.3.5| +---------------------------------+----------+-----------+---------+
Deactivate a plugin
Let’s say you wanted to deactivate the wp-conditional-captcha plugin:
wp plugin deactivate wp-conditional-captcha
And the output:
Success: Plugin 'wp-conditional-captcha' deactivated.
To deactivate other plugins, replace wp-conditional-captcha in the command above with the plugin’s name.
Activate a plugin
And if you wanted to enable it again:
wp plugin activate wp-conditional-captcha
And the output:
Success: Plugin 'wp-conditional-captcha' activated.
Doing it directly in the database
It’s also possible to deactivate plugins directly in the database if you don’t have command line access, which I’ll cover in a future post.
