Have you tried:
– deactivating all plugins to see if this resolves the problem. If this works, re-activate the plugins one by one until you find the problematic plugin(s).
– switching to the default theme to rule out any theme-specific problems.
– resetting the plugins folder by FTP or PhpMyAdmin. Sometimes, an apparently inactive plugin can still cause problems.
– re-uploading all files & folders – except the wp-content folder and wp-config.php & root .htaccess files – from a fresh download of WordPress 3.8.3. Make sure that you delete the old copies of files & folder before uploading the new ones.
Why haven’t you updated WordPress to 3.9 yet?
Thanks esmi.
Note that this is happening on ALL my websites…about 12.
I have tried resetting the plugins folder on one site without success and had previously deactivated all plugins on two others.
The reason why I hadn’t undated to 3.9 on some sites was because I thought it was good practice to update plugins to the latest version first.
This looks like it is a host issue.
PS..I can’t update WP from Dashboard either.. Get white screen with Update WordPress at the top (not linkable)
A clue:
I cannot update plugins from localhost version of sites as well. I have disabled firewall but that made no difference. I have tried all the suggestions mentioned above by esmi.
SOLVED. After having no help initially from Vodahost support on this, I researched when this started and also discovered a cageFS issue.
My letter to another person at Vodahost was:
Seemingly, since this (site time out) was changed I have had problems with updating WordPress plugins and upgrades to WP. (but that could be coincidence).
Update issues may be an execution time out issue and I notice that in PHP the execution time is 30 seconds which may not be enough.
I also noted that under current PHP version (set to native (5.4) it says that “User username (my user name) not in CageFS” Is this an issue?
This is a site wide issue and occurs on all ten or so websites I have. I cannot seem to get any answers from support.
Is there anyone there with any ideas on this please.
To reiterate:
I cannot install or update plugins from the Dashboard.
I cannot update the WordPress version…I just end up with a white page and “Update WordPress” at the top.
I have tried doing a fully manual WP update on one site to WP 9 which was successful. But it still would not do an autoupdate to 9.1.
The response I got from someone who seemed to be more senior was:
I have enabled cageFS on your account. Now you can change the time out through your cPanel > Select PHP version > PHP settings.
Always at your service.
Without changing any other settings I found that I could do updates immediately. I found the CageFS issue in Cpanel under “Select PHP version” where it said my user name was not in CageFS.
I assume support fixing the CageFS issue is what fixed my problem with being unable to do updates.
I will leave this open for a few days just to see if anyone can clarify this for me. Otherwise the moderator or I will close it as resolved.
