Today while trying to update my blog to the new version, i received the following error: “Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute.” any time I attempted to view the website. I was using the built in wordpress update functionality. After doing some research it appears that when an update is being performed wordpress places a file in the Root of the blog called “.maintenance”
This is actually a really simple fix. Just FTP into your web space and delete this file, and your blog should be back to normal, Provided the incomplete upgrade did not damage your blog in any way.
Why Does this happen?
During a wordpress update, WordPress creates this “dummy” file in the root, to block access to the website while the update is in progress. This is done so that if someone attempts to view your website while the upgrade is in progress, they may get ill desired results. If you are having problems using the auto update feature i suggest updating it manually, and researching why its not working. There can be many causes.
Hope this Helps!