502 error after updating WordPress version

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  ernestohof · Member · Mar 5, 2026 at 9:10 am

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  After updating the wordpress version of my trial website from 6.6.x to 6.9.x, I am getting a 502 error on both the website itself and admin page: “502 – Web server received an invalid response while acting as a gateway or proxy server.”

  The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

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  james3265166 · Member · Mar 6, 2026 at 12:15 am

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  A 502 Bad Gateway error immediately following a WordPress core update to 6.9.x on your site indicates that the update process likely timed out or corrupted a core file, causing the PHP process to “hang” and fail to communicate with the Nginx/Apache web server. Because this affects both the front end and the admin dashboard, the most effective fix is to manually trigger a “re-install” by accessing your site via FTP or File Manager and deleting the .maintenance file in your root directory, which often gets stuck during the 6.6 to 6.9 transition. If the site remains down, you should temporarily rename your plugins folder to plugins-old to rule out an incompatible extension that isn’t yet optimized for the version 6.9 architecture, as a single outdated plugin can crash the entire PHP gateway during a version jump.