How to Fix “Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute.”

“Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute.” is displayed usually while you’re upgrading WordPress. WordPress will throw this same error message if you try to update a WordPress plugin or theme but failed. Fortunately, it is easy to get rid of this message and here is how.

Delete the “.maintenance” file under the base directory of WordPress

“To fix the Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute.”, you need to delete the “.maintenance” file under the base/root directory of where your WordPress is installed.

1. In Unix or Linux, a file starting with “.” is a hidden file. In order to the see the hidden files you need to configure your ftp program to show and process hidden files on the server.
2. Then delete the “.maintenance” file.

Now your WordPress should be back to normal.

Image Credit: Christopher Ross