How to Deactivate WordPress Theme When Not Able to Access wp-admin

As you know how your WordPress looks is all because of your WordPress theme. WordPress theme provides style, layout, typography and user interaction to your website. As WordPress regularly updates for security, features and improvements. There are chances some functions go away and some stay or new functions take place of old functions.

So in case you are having a dead white screen in WordPress? Or you have received a there has been a critical error on this website error? And you have found out that there is something wrong with your theme or want to know if something wrong is with your theme?

If WordPress admin panel is working then its very simple just go to wp-admin >> Themes and activate default WordPress theme twentyTwenty Two. But if your WordPress admin isn’t working and you are in process to troubleshoot your website and have tried to disable all your WordPress plugins. Now you want to disable WordPress theme through FTP or cPanel or phpMyAdmin let’s see how you can do this.

Why do you need to disable WordPress theme if WordPress admin is not working?

Well either you are using a premium WordPress theme or a free WordPress theme. In both cases WordPress theme plays a very important role to style and provide layout to your website. If there is something wrong in your WordPress theme then you are going to face problem or FATAL php error. The FATAL php error will produce critical error.

Maybe you can try to edit your theme’s functions.php file to troubleshoot theme’s problem?

You may watch the video below which will guide you through every step to disable your WordPress theme and then re-activate it back. Don’t forget to backup your website before doing anything.

There are 3 main ways to disable or deactivate your WordPress theme in case your WordPress admin panel is not working.

1. Disable WordPress theme via FTP
2. Disable WordPress theme via Hosting Panel’s File Manager
3. Disable WordPress theme via phpMyAdmin

Let’s try to cover these methods one by one in more details.

Important: If you disable an active WordPress theme you would see no output in front end. But a The theme directory “ThemeName” does not exist. So don’t panic you can access admin panel if theme as the problem your admin panel should be working now.

1. Disable WordPress theme via FTP

Well this is very simple just login your FTP and access your themes directory and rename your active theme’s directory name. Let’s check it step by step how to disable active WordPress theme via FTP.

1. First of all connect to your server using a FTP client like FileZilla.
2. Now find the installation directory of your WordPress
3. Open wp-content and themes in it
4. Identify your active theme’s directory
5. Right click on active theme’s directory and rename it

That’s it you have successfully disabled your active WordPress theme via FTP. Now you would not see any output on front side but admin panel would work fine if theme was the problem.

2. Disable WordPress theme via Hosting Control Panel’s File Manager

While you have your Hosting Control panel logins and can easily open the file manager. Then you can disable your WordPress theme by going through File Manager as well. Just locate wp-content/themes/ directory of your WordPress installation then rename active theme’s directory.

There are some simple steps to follow before you can disable your WordPress theme via File Manager.

1. Access your hosting control panel
2. Open the File Manager
3. Locate your WordPress installation
4. Enter into wp-content directory and then open themes directory
5. Right click on active WordPress theme to rename it
6. Rename your theme and that’s it.

Now you have disabled your WordPress theme via cPanel to re-activate it just rename the directory to original name.

3. Disable WordPress theme via phpMyAdmin

For this method to disable your WordPress theme you need to know the exact name of your WordPress installation’s database. If you don’t know the name of your database open wp-config.php file from your WordPress installation via File manager and find the DB_NAME.

Let’s follow the simple steps to disable WordPress theme through phpMyAdmin.

1. Open phpMyAdmin on your Web Hosting Server.
2. Select the database of your WordPress installation
3. Open the `_options` table. Prefix of table name can be wp_ or anything else.
4. Find option_name template and change its value to something else.
5. Find option_name stylesheet and change its value to something else.

Done! You have successfully disabled your WordPress theme via phpMyAdmin. To re-activate your WordPress theme just put back the original values in both options.

How to re-activate WordPress theme

It’s completely like reverse engineering whatever you did before just reverse it and you can then re-activate WordPress theme going to your WordPress admin panel.

My theme have problem what to do?

Well if there is something wrong with your theme and you are unable to fix it. You can talk to us and hire a WordPress developer. Our expert WordPress developer will not only fix the problem but will guide you through what caused it. Moreover we will audit any other type of issues and will inform you about full health of your website.

Summary

in this article we tried to explain how you can deactivate WordPress theme with different ways. Its upto you whichever method you use. But after you have disabled the WordPress theme a empty front end will wait for you. But admin side will work fine so there is nothing to panic. Once you re-activate your theme front end will be okay as well! Checkout our WordPress maintenance service which keeps you away from such issues always.