Title: Content Decoding Failed
Last modified: March 5, 2018

---

# Content Decoding Failed

 *  Resolved [penguinbennett88](https://wordpress.org/support/users/penguinbennett88/)
 * (@penguinbennett88)
 * [8 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/content-decoding-failed/)
 * So I have not been on my site in a while and was trying to get back on tonight…
   I felt like writing… however to no avail with the “content decoding failed” message
   on Chrome. Have tried other internet browsers, same problem.
 * Now, I just don’t know where to go from here really. I can’t access the admmin
   page, so I can’t tell if it’s just updating that needs doing, or what really.
   I’m pretty sure I still have current domain name ownership and that my hosting
   is also current (til later on this year…)
 * Can someone help?!
 * Thanks in advance.
 * Sarah 🙂
 * The page I need help with: _[[log in](https://login.wordpress.org/?redirect_to=https%3A%2F%2Fwordpress.org%2Fsupport%2Ftopic%2Fcontent-decoding-failed%2F%3Foutput_format%3Dmd&locale=en_US)
   to see the link]_

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

 *  [Andrew Nevins](https://wordpress.org/support/users/anevins/)
 * (@anevins)
 * WCLDN 2018 Contributor | Volunteer support
 * [8 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/content-decoding-failed/#post-10039284)
 * Are you sure that’s the right website?
 *  Thread Starter [penguinbennett88](https://wordpress.org/support/users/penguinbennett88/)
 * (@penguinbennett88)
 * [8 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/content-decoding-failed/#post-10039335)
 * Yep. My Chrome has it saved and I have a bookmark for it.
 *  [Andrew Nevins](https://wordpress.org/support/users/anevins/)
 * (@anevins)
 * WCLDN 2018 Contributor | Volunteer support
 * [8 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/content-decoding-failed/#post-10039364)
 * Try deactivating all of your plugins to explore whether any could be responsible.
   If none are, keep all plugins deactivated and switch to the Twenty Seventeen 
   theme to check whether it’s an issue with your theme.
 * If you don’t have access to the dashboard, try deactivating your plugins first
   using FTP.
 * You just need to log in to your hosting provider’s control panel, then open up
   the File Manager tool (or similarly named).
 * Then go to the ‘wp-content’ folder and inside you’ll see a folder named ‘themes’
   and ‘plugins.
 * To deactivate all plugins, just rename the ‘plugins’ folder to ‘plugins-old’.
 * Then re-load your site in the browser. Does the issue persist?
 * After that you can rename your the ‘plugins-old’ folder back to ‘plugins’.
 * Can you access the dashboard now?
 *  Thread Starter [penguinbennett88](https://wordpress.org/support/users/penguinbennett88/)
 * (@penguinbennett88)
 * [8 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/content-decoding-failed/#post-10039412)
 * Thanks for the help, Andrew.
 * I deactivated the plugins as per your step above with “plugins-old” and the front
   end of the site can now be loaded.
 * When I try to log into /wp-admin, I now get this message regarding W3 Cache:
 * W3 Total Cache Error: some files appear to be missing or out of place. Please
   re-install plugin or remove /home2/sarahlcb/public_html/wp-content/advanced-cache.
   php.W3 Total Cache Error: some files appear to be missing or out of place. Please
   re-install plugin or remove /home2/sarahlcb/public_html/wp-content/db.php.W3 
   Total Cache Error: some files appear to be missing or out of place. Please re-
   install plugin or remove /home2/sarahlcb/public_html/wp-content/object-cache.
   php.
 * What’s the best course of action here? (So I can log in and update all the plugins/
   Wordpress/themes so everything is compatible once more?)
 * Cheers
 *  [Andrew Nevins](https://wordpress.org/support/users/anevins/)
 * (@anevins)
 * WCLDN 2018 Contributor | Volunteer support
 * [8 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/content-decoding-failed/#post-10039426)
 * Looks like the ‘W3 Total Cache’ plugin caused the problem. Now that you’ve narrowed
   down the issue, you can post on the W3 Total Cache support section for help with
   this: [https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/w3-total-cache#new-post](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/w3-total-cache#new-post)
 * Feel free to provide a link back to this thread for context.
 *  Thread Starter [penguinbennett88](https://wordpress.org/support/users/penguinbennett88/)
 * (@penguinbennett88)
 * [8 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/content-decoding-failed/#post-10039455)
 * Thanks Andrew – once I have an answer I will post here.
 * Have a great day! 🙂
 *  Thread Starter [penguinbennett88](https://wordpress.org/support/users/penguinbennett88/)
 * (@penguinbennett88)
 * [8 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/content-decoding-failed/#post-10042371)
 * Update:
 * Deleted the files mentioned above – however it did not work.
 * Also deleted /home2/sarahlcb/public_html/wp-content/w3-total-cache-config.php
   and /home2/sarahlcb/public_html/wp-content/w3-total-cache-config-preview.php 
   and then I was able to access the /wp-admin end of my site.
 * Then changed the plugins-old back to plugins so I could update them all to the
   newest version.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

The topic ‘Content Decoding Failed’ is closed to new replies.

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 7 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [penguinbennett88](https://wordpress.org/support/users/penguinbennett88/)
 * Last activity: [8 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/content-decoding-failed/#post-10042371)
 * Status: resolved

## Topics

### Topics with no replies

### Non-support topics

### Resolved topics

### Unresolved topics

### All topics