Rollback of broken WordPress plugin

Website stopped working after plugin update

You probably know this situation too: you update one of your WordPress plugins and afterwards your website no longer works as it should. That's what happened to me recently with my cache plugin - the homepage wasn't displayed the way it was before the plugin.

Method 1: Use the WP Rollback plugin

This method works for all plugins and themes that you can get for free from WordPress.org. To do this, proceed as follows:

• Just install the plugin and activate it

• Next, go to your plugin overview and select the plugin that you want to roll back to a previous version

• In the following overview you can select the version to which you want to reset the plugin

• You will then be asked if you really want to perform the rollback - it is recommended to make a backup beforehand and test the rollback on a staging environment. If you want to continue the rollback, click Rollback.
• You will then see on the overview page that you are no longer using the latest version of the reset plugin.

Alternative Method: Replace Files on FTP Server

The plugin variant is certainly the easiest and most uncomplicated method to reset your plugins. In some cases, however, it may also be absolutely necessary that you replace the files directly on your FTP server, e.g. if you crashed your entire WP Admin environment with an update. In this case you proceed as follows:

• First of all, I recommend that you download an FTP program such as Filezilla. With this program you can connect to your FTP server with your access data and upload or download files.
• Next you need the files of the plugin version you want to install. To do this, go to wordpress.org and search for your plugin. Then click on "Advanced View" - there you can usually download older versions of the plugin directly. Sometimes it can also happen that you have to write to the developer of the plugin directly.
• Now you have the plugin files - extract them and now open Filezilla and connect to your server.
• Navigate via /wp-content/ to the /plugins/ folder
• There you are now looking for the plugin that you want to reset (e.g. /wp-content/plugin/autoptimize)
• Delete all files in this folder and copy the new files you downloaded into the folder
• That's it - you have now rolled back the plugin to a previous version

The simplest method to reset a so-called "broken plugin" to an earlier version is certainly via WP fallback. Therefore, if your WP-Admin environment is still working, I would advise you to use this method - in all other cases you have to go via FTP server.

happy blogging,
your lina

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