[Resolved] WordPress down after auto upgrade — WP-SpamShield 1.9.9.8.6 and before

If you recently auto upgrade your WordPress website, it is possible that you are not able to visit your.

Chances are, you ran into an issue caused by a builtin module – WP-SpamShield: https://wordpress.org/support/topic/auto-updated-and-broke-many-sites/.

Steps to debug this (Linux/Unix + httpd2):
1. Check your system log: /var/logs/apache2/error.log. You may found some logs like:
[Wed Feb 01 06:14:38.412431 2017] [:error] [pid 14390:tid 140592994543360] [client 91.220.131.134:60744] FastCGI: server "/usr/lib/cgi-bin/php5.fcgi" stderr: PHP message: PHP Fatal error: Class 'WPSS_Utils' not found in /path_to_wordpress/wp-content/plugins/wp-spamshield/wp-spamshield.php on line 7323, referer: http://coderstan.com/wp-login.php

2.If so, the solution is to deactivate this module manually. Find the plugin at following path:
/path_to_your_wordpress/wp-content/plugins/wp-spamshield

3.Run this command:
mv wp-spamshield/ wp-spamshield_inactivate/

That will force inactivation of this plugin and you could change the name back after you update this plugin to a stable version.

That’s it.

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