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How to Fix WordPress Admin Lockout After a Plugin Update
Imagine you log in to the WordPress admin area. cannot log in to the WordPress admin area even though your website is up and running perfectly fine. This often occurs due to forgotten credentials, lost privileges, or overly restrictive security plugins. The site works, but you’re stuck outside the dashboard, unable to manage your content, install plugins, or make any changes.
Today, we will explore common reasons we might be locked out and walk through proven solutions to regain access.
An Overview:
Why You’re Locked Out of WordPress Admin
Several common issues can prevent us from accessing our WordPress dashboard:
- Incorrect or forgotten login credentials are the most frequent cause. Maybe we mistyped our password, forgot it entirely, or had it changed without realizing it. If our login details are incorrect, WordPress simply won’t let us in.
If you’re having trouble resetting your password, follow this step-by-step guide to reset the WordPress admin password using phpMyAdmin.
- Sometimes, we can log in but find that the account no longer has administrator capabilities. This may occur due to database changes, plugin conflicts, or a cyberattack. Without admin rights, we can’t manage key site settings or install plugins.
- Many WordPress security plugins are designed to protect the login page from unauthorized access. But if configured incorrectly or triggered by our activity (e.g., too many failed login attempts), these plugins might lock us out.
In some cases, security plugins may interfere with the password reset process itself. If you’re seeing a message like “WordPress could not save password reset key to database”, check out this guide to fix the password reset key error.
Before We Begin
Before making changes to the site or database, complete these safety measures:
- If possible, back up the entire WordPress site via the hosting dashboard. This is essential in case anything goes wrong.
- If we have a recent backup from before the issue started, restoring it might solve the problem.
- Tools like FileZilla let us connect directly to the web server to manage files manually.
How to Fix WordPress Admin Lockout
Let’s examine a few effective solutions tailored to each situation.
1. Reset the WordPress Password via phpMyAdmin
If we have forgotten our password and can’t use the “Lost password?” link, here’s how to reset it directly from the database:
- Log in to your hosting dashboard and open phpMyAdmin.
- Select the WordPress database and click on the `wp_users` table.
- Find the username and click the Edit (pencil) icon.
- In the `user_pass` field, enter the new password.
- In the Function column, select `MD5` (this ensures it’s securely hashed).
- Scroll down and click Go to save.
We can also update our email by changing the value in the `user_email` field.
If you want more in-depth instructions, follow this comprehensive guide on resetting the WordPress admin password.
2. Create a New Admin User via phpMyAdmin
If our existing account has lost admin privileges, we can manually create a new administrator:
- Open the `wp_users` table and click Insert.
- Fill out the fields:
- `ID`: Use a unique number (e.g., 111).
- `user_login`: Your desired username.
- `user_pass`: Enter your password and set function to `MD5`.
- `user_email`: Add your email.
- `user_status`: Set to `0`.
- Click Go to save.
- Now, go to the `wp_usermeta` table and click Insert.
- Then, add the following:
- `user_id`: Match the ID used above (e.g., 111).
- `meta_key`: `wp_capabilities`
- `meta_value`: `a:1:{s:13:”administrator”;b:1;}`
- Click Go, then repeat the process to insert:
- `meta_key`: `wp_user_level`
- * `meta_value`: `10`
We can now log in with this new admin account.
3. Use WordPress’s Built-in Password Recovery
If we can still receive emails to the registered account:
- Go to the WordPress login page.
- Click Lost your password?
- Enter the username or email.
- Follow the link sent to the inbox to reset the password.
Make sure to double-check the spelling of the email address and username when using this method.
Still facing issues? You might also want to read how to run a program without admin privileges—this trick is sometimes useful when you’re blocked from full access due to system restrictions on shared or limited hosting.
4. Restore Administrator Privileges
If admin rights were removed after a hack or misconfiguration, follow the steps in section 2 to create a new admin user. This method eliminates the need to recover the old account, giving us complete control again.
Check out this helpful article on fixing the “WordPress error moving to trash” issue. It covers how to resolve database and permission errors which may be linked to your lockout situation.
[Need assistance with a different issue? Our team is available 24/7.]
Conclusion
Getting locked out of your WordPress admin panel is fixable with the right approach. Whether we need to reset a password, restore admin access, or create a new user from scratch, tools like phpMyAdmin and FTP access make recovery straightforward.
In short, our Support Engineers demonstrated how to fix WordPress admin lockout after a plugin update.
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