A WordPress watchdog plugin that automatically detects when your site has crashed and rolls back the most recently modified plugin. A system cron probes every minute — no WordPress required to trigger recovery. Completely free.
No subscriptions. No accounts. No configuration. Single PHP file, drop in and done.
Full write up: You Just Uploaded a New Plugin and Your WordPress Site Just Crashed. Now What?
You install or update a plugin and it white screens your site. WordPress is down. You cannot access the admin to deactivate the offending plugin. Your only options are SSH or FTP to manually delete the plugin files, or restore from a backup. If you are on shared hosting without shell access, you are stuck until your host responds to a support ticket.
A system cron job runs the watchdog shell script (/usr/local/bin/cs-crash-watchdog.sh) every 60 seconds. Each run does the following:
-
Probe: Sends an HTTP GET to a lightweight endpoint on your own site (
?cs_pcr_probe=1). The endpoint returnsCLOUDSCALE_OKwith no cache headers. -
Evaluate: If the probe returns HTTP 200 with the expected body, your site is healthy. The script exits and does nothing.
-
Recover: If the probe fails (500 error, timeout, unexpected body, connection refused), the watchdog script uses WP-CLI to identify the most recently modified plugin file on disk. If that file was modified within the last 10 minutes (the recovery window), it deactivates and deletes that plugin.
The 10 minute window is critical. It means the watchdog only acts on plugins that were just installed, updated, or modified. It will never touch a plugin that has been sitting quietly on your server for days. If your site crashes for a reason unrelated to a recent plugin change (database failure, disk full, PHP upgrade), the watchdog sees no recently modified plugin and takes no action.
- A newly installed plugin that fatal errors on activation
- A plugin update that introduces a breaking change
- A plugin file upload via FTP or SSH that contains bad code
- Any scenario where a recently modified plugin causes a white screen, 500 error, or fatal PHP error
- It does not protect against database corruption, server misconfigurations, or theme errors
- It does not act on plugins older than 10 minutes (by file modification time)
- It does not have a UI, settings page, or admin panel. There is nothing to configure
- It never deactivates or deletes itself
The WINDOW_SECONDS constant is set to 600 (10 minutes). Only plugins with a file modification time within this window are candidates for removal. This means:
- Install a plugin at 14:00, site crashes at 14:03: the plugin is within the window and gets removed
- Install a plugin at 14:00, site crashes at 14:15: the plugin is outside the window and is left alone
- Two plugins updated at 14:00 and 14:05, site crashes at 14:06: the plugin modified at 14:05 (most recent) gets removed first. If the site is still down at the next tick, the 14:00 plugin gets removed next (if still within the window)
- WordPress 6.0 or higher
- PHP 8.0 or higher
- A system cron must be configured to run the watchdog script every minute (the plugin's admin panel includes a setup guide)
- Download
cloudscale-plugin-crash-recovery.php - Upload it to
wp-content/plugins/ - Activate in WordPress admin
Or download the release zip and install via Plugins > Add New > Upload Plugin.
That is it. No settings. No configuration. Open the plugin's admin panel to complete the system cron setup — the Setup tab generates the correct cron entry for your server and confirms when it is active.
The plugin hooks into init at priority 1 and checks for the cs_pcr_probe query parameter. If present, it outputs CLOUDSCALE_OK with no cache headers and exits immediately. This endpoint is as lightweight as possible: no template loading, no theme, no other plugins executing past the init hook.
The probe request includes a cache busting timestamp parameter and explicit Cache-Control: no-cache headers to prevent CDN or browser caching of the response.
The entire plugin is a single PHP file with no dependencies, no assets, no database tables, and no options. It can be dropped into wp-content/plugins/ manually or installed as a standard WordPress plugin zip.
GPLv2 or later. See LICENSE for the full text.
Andrew Baker - CIO at Capitec Bank, South Africa.