That didn’t work as it’s what I tired and was the only way I was able to limp the site along.
In the end I got back up and running by completely migrating the site to a new host running a new version of PHP. Which I had planned on doing this summer but this forced my hand.
Or in my case this week…used thw database to disable all plugins after switching to the default theme (wordpress.com)
only after reinstallnig jetpack and with no themes and no plugins I still getting pluggable erros so assuming jetpack effed something up this last update 4.8.1
If you have FTP access to your site do what I did…goto sitefolder/wp-content/plugins/ and rename the authenticator plugin folder. It will be disabled because WordPress will no longer be able to open it.
