All plugins deleted

There’s a number of possibilities.

In a previous version of WordPress (upgrading from 3.9 to 4.0), it sometimes happened that the plugins just weren’t visible in the admin — they were still available and weren’t actually gone. This was just a bug and is NOT a common issue though.

Plugins are only removed manually — this is not supposed to happen with a WordPress update.

You should check if they still exist on the server, or if they are removed from the wp-content/plugins.

If they’re gone, it’s possible someone deleted all of them (like you say, there are a number of employees, so who knows?), either through the WordPress admin or directly on the server.

And yes, it is possible you got hacked and the hacker deleted all of them.

Check the list of users. Is there any user account that shouldn’t be there?

There’s not really a log file showing who did what, but if they are removed from the server, your webhosting company may be able to provide you with some logs to see how those plugins were removed.

I’ve never heard of a situation where performing a WordPress update deleted the site’s plugins. But, of course, that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen. It just means I haven’t heard of such a thing nor even figured it was possible given the many, many folks who update their WordPress sites on a daily basis successfully — including myself.

All that said, it’s much more likely something deleted the plugins OR possibly changed the plugin’s directory. Which would simulate a loss of all plugins. Thus, before anything else, do check to make sure you still have a plugin directory — wp-content/plugins and that it truly is empty.

As for what to do, I’m not the guy to speak to how one can check logs and such for who did such a thing. Sorry about that. But, to solve your immediate issue, yes, just download the latest versions of the plugins you were running and install them. Most likely, once reinstalled, they’ll still be setup the way you had them previously configured.

Hope this helps!

Thanks Randy and Mark for your help. I’m hoping our webhosting company can help with some information to see how this happened and get us back on track. All the plugins are gone and have been deleted, but I’m still not sure how.

You can try re-installing and re-activating the plugins. With some luck, the settings for them are still present in the database.

I think that’s what I’m going to have to do. I don’t know most of the plugins we used because our web hosting company set them up. I have quickly learned to pay more attention to what is being used on our website. Thanks Mark.

Where do I find the wp-content/plugins directory?

wp-content/plugins is a directory on the FTP server (computer) where your WordPress installation was installed. It sounds like you go through an independent company to manage your website, so I’d like to take a step back and get a little more information on the problem from you before we get into checking the FTP server.

First of all, I’d like to check on what you mean about the plugins being “gone.” If you log into the Dashboard (the system where you can add pages and posts to the site), and click on the “Plugins” menu on the left side, what do you see? Does it list any plugins at all?

I checked out the Dashboard and looked in the Plugins menu and all of them are gone which is why I thought they were deleted. I did try to re-install two we had and received a message saying they are installed and exist in the wp-content/plugins folder. So that seems like a huge bonus for us! However, I don’t know where this folder is located and it doesn’t seem like any of the plugins are currently running.

You need to use FTP or CPanel to look at your site files on the server – ask your hosting company if you don’t know how to access those.

Plugins folder will be here:

wp-content
    plugins

Ok. Thanks!

OK gents, this may sound really dumb from your position, but by chance is there a backup solution in place, and if so, can they be retrieved from there?

I’m no expert, but I would hope that a company would have such a solution, and if not, this would be the perfect time to seriously look at one.

I will have to ask our web host if there is a backup solution to a problem like this. The whole dashboard menu has changed since the plugins have been relocated. We can go back to previous versions of web pages, but I don’t know how that will bring back the plugins. I’m guessing the web host will have to solve this issue. I’m waiting on a response from our web host on how to resolve this and prevent it from happening again.

@website Hugger – just FYI, I’m not a gent :)!

@wcmdesign – have you renamed the plugins folder to plugins.HOLD and wait for a bit and then change the name back again? This is a standard troubleshooting step. I saw a couple of other people have similar issue after updating to 4.1 and doing this fixed it.

usually web hosts already have periodic backups – may be weekly.
but first make sure that the plugins are really deleted or not. download a ftp client like filezilla (free) and use it to navigate to your websites installation folder -> wp-content -> plugins
you would need your ftp id and password that your host provided you.

@wcmdesign, have you been able to verify whether or not your wp-contents/plugins folder is truly empty yet? Moreover, have you tried @wpyogi’s brilliant idea to rename the plugins folder to plugins.HOLD, wait for a bit, and then rename it back to plugins yet?

P.S., If you discover that your plugins are truly gone, and originally it was your web host who supplied the bulk of them, then wouldn’t another path to recovery be to ask your web host to get them for you again?