How to Enable / Activate WordPress Plugins from the Database

Encountering a situation where you can’t access your WordPress admin area can be stressful, especially if you need to activate a crucial plugin to restore your site’s functionality.

Fortunately, there’s a way to activate WordPress plugins directly from the database, even when you are locked out of the admin area.

With extensive experience in WordPress troubleshooting and site management, we have helped numerous users navigate this common issue. Activating plugins through the database is a practical technique that can prevent long periods of downtime and get your site back on track quickly.

In this article, we will show you how to easily activate your WordPress plugins using the database.

When Should You Activate WordPress Plugins Using Database?

A number of common WordPress errors can prevent a website owner from accessing the WordPress admin area. In many situations, the user is looking to deactivate WordPress plugins without admin access.

However, in some situations, a website owner may need to activate certain plugins to restore access to their WordPress website.

For example, let’s assume an error is stopping you from accessing your WordPress dashboard, and you have found a plugin that can fix that error.

Luckily, WordPress stores the active plugin information in your WordPress database. This means you can manually enter this information directly in the database and tell WordPress to activate a plugin.

The only condition is that the plugin must be installed on your WordPress site, which means that it should be present in the plugins folder on your WordPress website.

That being said, let’s see how you can easily enable/activate a plugin using the database, step-by-step:

Step 1: Find Your Database Name Using the Hosting Control Panel

To activate your WordPress plugins using phpMyAdmin, first, you need to find out your WordPress database’s name.

To do this, log in to your web hosting dashboard. We will be using Bluehost for this tutorial.

If you are using a different hosting company, then your WordPress hosting dashboard may look slightly different.

From the ‘Websites’ tab, switch to the ‘Advanced’ tab and click the ‘Manage’ button next to the ‘File Manager’ option.

This will open up the File Manager in a new window. Here, simply locate and click the public_html folder from the left column.

All the files that are stored in the public_html folder will now open up on the screen.

From here, you have to locate and click the folder with your site’s name on it from the ‘Name’ column.

Some users may instead see their WordPress files and folders installed inside the public_html folder.

After you have opened up your WordPress site’s file, locate the wp-config.php file in the ‘Name’ section and right-click on it.

This will open up a menu where you must select the ‘View’ option.

This will open up the wp-config.php file in a new window where you can locate your database details.

We recommend that you copy and paste your database details, including the username and password, into a notepad app on your computer.

Now that you’ve successfully found your database’s name, let’s move to our next step.

Step 2: Locate the Active Plugins Option via phpMyAdmin

After you have found out the name of your database, you need to go back to your WordPress hosting control panel.

Once there, switch to the ‘Advanced’ tab again and scroll down to the ‘phpMyAdmin’ option. After that, click the ‘Manage’ button next to it.

This will launch the phpMyAdmin app in a new browser tab.

Next, click the ‘Database’ tab from the navigation menu at the top of the page.

Once you’ve done that, locate your WordPress database and click on the browse button to expand it.

This will load all your WordPress database tables on the screen.

Here, you have to find the wp_options table and click browse next to it.

Note: By default, WordPress uses wp_ as the prefix for table names. Your WordPress database table may have a different table prefix.

Inside the wp_options table, you’ll need to find the row where option_name is set toactive_plugins.

After that, click on the ‘Edit’ link next to it.

This will open up a box where you can manually enter details to activate a plugin.

Step 3: Activate a Plugin Using phpMyAdmin

WordPress stores the active plugin’s information in a special format so that it can be programmatically accessed by the software. In order to tell WordPress which plugins to activate, we will need to use that same format.

First, we will start by entering the option_value as a:1: and then opening up the curly bracket ({).

We are entering this value as 1 because we only want to activate one plugin. You can change the value to the number of plugins you plan on activating.

Next, we will be entering i:0; after the curly bracket. Here we are essentially assigning a serial number to our plugin.

Remember to always assign numbers starting from 0 instead of 1.

Next, we will be entering the number of characters present in the plugin’s name and the php file name of the plugin that we’re about to activate.

For that, we will type s:24: in the box. Keep in mind that the number of characters will differ for each plugin based on the characters in the plugin directory and file name.

For instance, we are activating WPForms in this tutorial which has 24 characters in its name, including the file name of the plugin, as stored in our file manager.

Next, you just need to type the plugin’s directory name. You can find it by visiting the /wp-content/plugins/ folder using the File Manager app.

Don’t forget to add quotation marks before typing the plugin’s directory name.

After the /, you have to enter the plugin’s file name.

To find the file name, visit File Manager again and open the folder of the plugin that you plan on activating.

From here, locate the PHP file of the plugin. This will be the plugin’s file name that you will have to add.

Now, go back to phpMyAdmin to type the name of the plugin, and then close the quotation marks.

After that, simply add a semi-colon (;) and close the curly brackets (}). The final value in this example would look like this:

a:1:{i:0;s:24:"wpforms-lite/wpforms.php";}

This is how it will look once you are done.

Next, simply click the ‘Go’ button to execute the command.

Now go visit your WordPress dashboard and head over to the Plugins » Installed Plugins page.

Your plugin has been successfully activated.

Now let’s say you want to activate two more plugins.

First, you will need to change the number of plugins. After that, you will adjust each entry for the plugin that you want to activate.

Here is an example:

a:3:{
i:0;s:47:"all-in-one-seo-pack-pro/all_in_one_seo_pack.php";
i:1;s:35:"insert-headers-and-footers/ihaf.php";
i:2;s:24:"wpforms-lite/wpforms.php";
}

Note: We have added line breaks here to make the code look more readable. You need to make sure that there are no line breaks or spaces in your code. Otherwise, it wouldn’t work.

Bonus: Deactivate WordPress Plugins From the Database

Apart from activating, you can also deactivate or delete a WordPress plugin from your database if you are unable to access your admin area. This can be helpful if you are troubleshooting an error or if a plugin has caused a compatibility issue on your site.

For this, you need to open the cPanel for your hosting dashboard. We are using Bluehost for this tutorial. Once you are there, scroll down to the ‘Databases’ section and click the ‘phpMyAdmin’ option.

This will open another tab on your screen where you must select your WordPress database.

After that, you will be able to see WordPress database tables. Here, you must locate and choose the wp_options table.

This will open another row of folders. You have to locate the option ‘active_plugins’ and then click on the ‘Edit’ link next to it.

Once the prompt opens up, simply change the option_value field to a:0:{}. Then, click the ‘Go’ button to save your changes.

For more details, see our tutorial on how to deactivate all plugins when not able to access the WordPress admin area.

We hope you learned how to activate a plugin using the database. You may also want to see our ultimate WordPress security guide and our top picks for the best WordPress themes for SEO experts.

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