Plugins Preventing Dashboard From Loading

Try these steps:
– deactivate all plugins and see if the problem persists. If it solves the problem, activate plugins one by one until you find the problematic one
– revert to Twenty Twelve theme and see if the issue is theme-specific
– delete any inactive plugins
– reinstall WordPress manually from a freshly downloaded copy except wp-content. Do not overwrite files/ folders but delete them before reinstalling.

Use FTP or your hosting control panel if you cannot access dashboard.
Backup your site including database so that you can restore in case anything goes wrong.

“- deactivate all plugins and see if the problem persists. If it solves the problem, activate plugins one by one until you find the problematic one”

I tried this already, and I think the culprit is BetterWPSecurity. I was briefly able to get to the Dashboard with all plugins disabled. I started turning them back on one at a time and when I turned on BetterWPSecurity, that was when I got into my current predicament. What’s got be baffled is that previously, when I used FTP to rename the “Plugins” folder to “Plugins.Hold”, I could access the dashboard. Now I can’t. I tried renaming just the “better-wp-security” subfolder of the “plugins” subfolder, but that didn’t work either.

Thanks for the help.

Can I see your site with Twenty Twelve theme and all plugins off?

Sadly, that doesn’t seem to help. I’ve deleted my main theme, so TwentyTwelve is the only one in the themes folder. But it’s still coming up blank. My plugins folder is currently renamed to “plugins.off”, but that also doesn’t seem to have an effect. Both the homepage and the wp-admin address just say unavailable. Any further suggestions? (And once again, thank you. I really appreciate this. I’ve been pouring through other topics here but nothing seems to apply.)

BetterWPSecurity edits the .htaccess file. Try renaming the .htaccess file to something else like .htacceXX

If that works, be sure to configure your permalinks again.

If I look at your site right now I get a blank page, but by looking at the source code I can see that there’s an error being generated from super cache not having the WPCACHEHOME set in the config file.

Maybe try renaming your plugins folder back to normal, setting the WPCACHEHOME in the config file and seeing if your site will load properly again?

If you’re not sure what the path in the WPCACHEHOME should be, it can be set automatically by CHMODing your wp-config.php file to 777. Make not of the default permissions on it, as you’ll want to change it back once your done refreshing the site. I would recommend backing up first.

Renaming .htaccess didn’t seem to have any effect.

I changed the wp-config.php file so that WPCACHEHOME was “plugins.hold” (which is what my plugins folder is called at the moment) instead of “plugins”. Then I changed the same location in the wp-cache-config.php that’s in the “wp-content” folder. That got rid of the source message about WPCACHEHOME on the blank page, but didn’t make any other difference. Just for fun I also tried CHMODing the wp-config to 777, but it didn’t change anything.

So, now I can get a true blank page which viewing the source also sees as blank. Out of curiosity, I then re-uploaded my main theme (which I had earlier deleted), and it comes back with “can’t establish connection” again instead of the blank screen.

Yet again, thanks for the help, but sadly it doesn’t look like I’m done wrestling with this yet.

Further actions that have no resolved this include following the instructions on this thread (https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/cant-access-dashboard-32?replies=10) to manually reinstall/update WordPress.

First I disabled all plugins through phpMyAdmin (setting active_plugins to “a:0:{}”). Then I replaced both the wp-admin and wp-includes folders and uploaded fresh copies of the individual files in the wp-content folder. (As per instructions, I did not overwrite the entire wp-content folder.)

After that didn’t work, I tried it with a fresh wp-config.php file, entering only the database information just like it was a fresh install. Nothing. Still can’t get to my Dashboard or my site. Any further suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

There are two things that I can see:
1. Most of the links lead to https://www.a2review.net/wp-admin/install.php, suggesting a possibility that still you have an incomplete WordPress installation
2. Similarly, there is a 403 Forbidden that can be because of any restrictions your host has placed.

So, you need to contact your web hosting company.

Poor netiquette on my part leaving this dangling for more than a month, but I contacted my hosting company (Hover), and they cleared it up pronto. Thanks for all the help here, it was invaluable.