As described in http://jira.atlassian.com/browse/PLUG-33, loading a plugin from the web front-end in that has no plugin-info in its plugin descriptor causes a NullPointerException. After trying this, future requests to Confluence result in this: org.apache.velocity.exception.MethodInvocationException: Invocation of method 'getText' in class com.atlassian.confluence.dashboard.actions.DashboardAction threw exception class java.lang.NullPointerException : null at org.apache.velocity.runtime.parser.node.ASTMethod.execute(ASTMethod.java:309) at org.apache.velocity.runtime.parser.node.ASTReference.execute(ASTReference.java:207) at org.apache.velocity.runtime.parser.node.ASTReference.render(ASTReference.java:250) at org.apache.velocity.runtime.parser.node.SimpleNode.render(SimpleNode.java:271) at org.apache.velocity.Template.merge(Template.java:296) at com.opensymphony.webwork.dispatcher.VelocityResult.doExecute(VelocityResult.java:91) at com.atlassian.xwork.results.ProfiledVelocityResult.doExecute(ProfiledVelocityResult.java:21) at com.opensymphony.webwork.dispatcher.WebWorkResultSupport.execute(WebWorkResultSupport.java:116) at com.opensymphony.xwork.DefaultActionInvocation.executeResult(DefaultActionInvocation.java:263) at com.opensymphony.xwork.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:187) at com.opensymphony.xwork.interceptor.AroundInterceptor.intercept(AroundInterceptor.java:35) Doesn't go away till restarted. Full error page attached.