Unless you visit the plugin’s page, the only code that loads on your site is the akeebabackup.php and helpers/AkeebaBackupWP.php files under the plugin’s directory. They contain very standard, biolerplate WordPress code which can actually execute without the rest of the plugin’s file even present on the site. FYI, Akeeba Backup for WordPress is developed on PHP 5.4 and 5.5, then tested for compatibility with PHP 5.3 and 5.6. The development machine I have in front of my is running PHP 5.5 and I can’t reproduce this issue.
I suspect that your host has enabled PHP’s OpCache code cache enabled which causes problems whenever you add, remove or modify code (.php) files on your server. I would suggest resetting the code cache. You may want to ask your host about how to best do that.
If you just want to uninstall the plugin, you can remove its directory from your site using FTP or your hosting control panel’s file manager. The plugin is typically located in wp-content/plugins/akeebabackupcore Removing that directory effectively uninstalls the plugin. If your problem persists after removing the files it should be apparent that our plugin has nothing to do with it.
Thanks for the very quick reply and effort to write in detail what might be wrong.
I have many (20+) WordPress sites with my host, with many different plugins and never encountered the problem of “code cache”. And to be honest, I don’t want to spend my time with these technical issues. So I did remove all the files and the site is up and running again.
