In some cases, the login page for WordPress back-office may be inaccessible. It is then sometimes difficult to know if the page no longer exists (due to a malicious action for example) or if it has simply been moved.
The goal of this article will be to recover access to this administration page, without knowing where it may be when you are blocked. You will then be able to log in and put things back in order.
Where does this error come from?
Most of the time this problem occurs when someone on your website changes the administration URL for security reasons. You can then find yourself blocked if you have not been informed of the terms of this change or if the person who performed this action simply does not answer you anymore.
Another case may be unsolicited access to your website. In this case, it is better to have your website audited by an expert or to use, if possible, a recent and robust backup of your website (files and database).
It can also occur as a result of a problem with your WordPress installation. In this case, it is advisable to repeat the operation.
We will look into the first case: the administration URL has changed, and you don’t know how to reach the right page and log in.
What can be done to solve this problem?
2 approaches are possible to fix the re-display of the administration page. The idea will be to try to put it back, at least temporarily, in its original place: wp-login.php.
If you have the ability to access your database
- Disable every plugins on your site
- Connect to your database
- If necessary, you can temporarily upload a phpmyadmin via (S)FTP to your site https://www.phpmyadmin.net/downloads/
- Go to the wp-options table
- Identify the option_value field and look for rows that contain active_plugins
- Tip: to isolate the lines we are looking for, you can run this query :
SELECT *FROM wp_options WHERE option_name = 'active_plugins';
- Tip: to isolate the lines we are looking for, you can run this query :
- For each of the plugins of your site, replace in the value
a:1:{}bya:0:{}
If you don’t have access to your database
- Set the default theme
- Connect to your site using (S)FTP
- Go to /wp-content/themes/ and change the name of the folder that contains your current theme. WordPress will then use the default theme (or you can download it: https://wordpress.org/themes/twentynineteen/and drop it on your server in the same folder of themes)
Depending on the action you have taken, if you have access again to the administration login page, all you have to do is to put back / reactivate your elements (theme, plugins …) 1 by 1. When the problem of access to the administration page will appear again, you will then know what the blocking element is so that you can make the appropriate corrections, or simply identify to what extent the URL has been changed.
Still stuck ? You can contact an expert.
