Is there a way to enable/disable plugins without going through the dashboard?

[ctgraham]

See the plugin_settings table in the database.

As an example of the column values, consider this example of disabling a plugin:

How to add/remove side bar blocks from the ojs system-wide pages?

Thanks @beghelli It worked. but instead I tried the to set enabled to 0. I used manual phpmyadmin settings, something to the effect of the following line. UPDATE plugin_settings SET setting_value = '0' WHERE setting_name = 'enabled' AND plugin_name = 'fontsizeblockplugin' AND journal_id = 0;