Maintaining business systems can be really hard.

When it comes to Billing software like WHMCS, periodic reviews and upgrades are required to integrate new feature enhancements, advanced security updates, etc.

Upgrades work well in most cases. Sometimes, the WHMCS database version conflicts with the release files version and result in errors like “Down for Maintenance“.

At Bobcares, we often resolve such errors as part of our Outsourced Technical Support for web hosts.

Today, let’s see the top 2 reasons for the WHMCS error “Down for Maintenance” and how we fix them.

What’s WHMCS error ‘Down for Maintenance’?

When the WHMCS software is updated, the message “Down for Maintenance” is displayed.

This prevents changes to the data during the upgrade process.

WHMCS compares the version of PHP files with the WHMCS version in the database.

If any mismatch is noted, it assumes that an upgrade is in progress and the maintenance message is displayed.

“Down for Maintenance” – This status message is helpful during an upgrade process. But, what if you see this message all the time? It’s quite annoying.

What can be the problem? Let’s take a quick look.

‘Down for Maintenance’ error in WHMCS – Causes & Fixes!

Based on our experience in managing servers and providing support to web hosts, let’s see the common reasons for this error and how our Support Engineers fix them.

1) Maintenance mode enabled in WHMCS

We’ve seen cases where web hosts enable Maintenance mode during WHMCS upgrade process.

This prevents users from accessing the client area and displays the custom maintenance message set by the web host.

How we fix?

Our Support Engineers disable the Maintenance mode from WHMCS panel using the below steps.

Setup > General settings > General > Uncheck the ‘Maintenance mode’ check box

How to disable Maintenance mode?

2)Version conflicts

This error can occur if the version of the WHMCS database doesn’t match the version of its release files.

For example, the files uploaded might be for version 4.4, but database hasn’t been updated and is still in version 4.3.

The files to perform database upgrade are present in the WHMCS “install” directory.

We’ve seen customers upgrade WHMCS without running the “install.php” script in the install directory.

As a result WHMCS database hasn’t been fully upgraded or not upgraded at all.

Result is “Down for Maintenance” error all the time.

How we fix?

i) First, we look at the WHMCS core files like init.php and cart.php and check the version number.

ii) We, then compare the version number to the WHMCS database version from the tblconfiguration table using the below command.

SELECT value FROM tblconfiguration WHERE setting = 'version'";

iii) If the database is from a newer version than the PHP files, we’ll download and upload the full release files of the newer version from WHMCS official site.

iv) If the PHP files are from a newer version than the database, we’ll upload the /install folder and run the upgrade process once again.

v) Once the upgrade is complete, we remove the /install folder from the server.

That’s it. Everything should be working now!!

Conclusion

WHMCS upgrades are necessary to keep the system secure. Sometimes, the WHMCS database version conflicts with the release files version and result in errors like “Down for Maintenance“. Today, we’ve discussed how our Support Engineers fix this problem.