Help! I can’t log into my WordPress admin

JoeWordpress, Coding, How ToLeave a Comment

Wordpress TipsWe get this one a lot. You go to login to the backend of your site (wp-admin) and you can’t get in and it either gives you a blank white page or it redirects you back to your homepage. Weird.

While I can’t diagnose every issue without seeing it, I can say that the most common reason I’ve seen for the backend (or an entire site) suddenly not loading correctly are related to plugins or themes – usually after a recent update.

The quickest way to see if that is the case is to login to your FTP, navigate to the wp-content folder then go to the /plugins folder. There you will see a listing of your plugins. If you sort by date, you should be able to easily see which ones were updated recently.

What I usually do is create a new sub-folder in wp-content called TEMP. Then I start moving the plugin folders out of wp-content/plugins into wp-content/TEMP and try logging into the backend after each folder/plugin is moved.

WordPress will automatically deactivate missing plugins that were moved out of the plugins folder, so if doing this allows you to get back in, then you should be able to narrow it down to the specific plugin causing the problem.

If your plugins aren’t doing it, it could be your theme. Navigate to the wp-content/themes folder and locate your theme. If you rename the folder or move it to a TEMP folder, then WordPress will use the default theme (assuming you didn’t delete it), which should also allow you you to get back into the backend and do some debugging from there.

As always, use reputable plugins and good quality themes to avoid issues and conflicts that may kill your site. More importantly, you should be doing regular backups of your WordPress site, database and files.

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