Hi @blackpicnic,
Glad you reached out, I can help here!
I’ll lead the fix for this, and follow up with a reason why this may happen, and a helpful way to avoid this pickle in the future.
When you delete GiveWP, all your data (forms, donor records, donation records etc) are preserved unless you specifically choose to eliminate that data when you are uninstalling. If you did not choose to delete all data, the data remains intact (so don’t click that check box!).
First, you’ll need to delete the give folder on your server via FTP, SFTP, or using your hosting file manager. We have an excellent step-by-step article on how to navigate FTP to locate that plugin and get it deleted:
https://givewp.com/documentation/resources/deactivate-wordpress-plugins-white-screen/
Download FileZilla:
https://filezilla-project.org/
Next, navigate to the upper left hand corner to “Site Manager” or “Host” and connect your site (this will ask for log in credentials). Once your site is connected, you’ll be able to navigate from your root folder to the wp-content directory. This is where your plugins folder lives (wp-content/plugins/). You’ll be able to deactivate or delete it from here, which will clear out all that information that is stopping your new download and that “destination folder already exists” error message.
After you delete it, you can download the GiveWP plugin from here: https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/give/
After that, navigate to your dashboard, click on Plugins > Add New and click to upload a new plugin. Now, upload the GiveWP plugin you downloaded, install it, and make sure to activate it.
Make sure to walk through that article above, it includes screenshots of each step to keep the process manageable.
The most common reason we see this, is an interruption of service by the server (either the site’s or WordPress’s server). Even the smallest hiccup in service can cause the files to become corrupted, which is only repairable by deleting the old files and starting with a new download/install. While it is very frustrating, this type of situation is very rare!
To prevent it from happening and taking down your website, I would recommend setting up a very solid workflow. This means having a staging environment or test site where you can test any updates before actually performing them on your live site, as well as having backups that you can confidently restore from in the case you need to. This way, even if you bump into the rare event of plugin breakage, you can quickly restore the healthy backup of your site, with very minimal down time.
Let me know if you have any questions in the meantime, I’m happy to help.
