What to do when you are Locked Out of WordPress Dashboard?

Like any other software, your experience with WordPress too is not going to be always smooth. Every now and then you’ll be facing issues with WordPress, which is good as you get to learn new things while solving the problem.

One such issue is, getting locked out of WordPress dashboard. Getting locked out of your WordPress admin area can be quite irritating.

There can be a few reasons for why you cannot login to the WordPress Admin Dashboard any more.

If you’re facing this problem right after updating your WordPress plugins, then the chances are that a plugin might be the reason.

We recommend you to keep your admin area secure to save your site from hackers.

Why do you get locked out of WordPress dashboard?

There are quite a few reasons why you can’t access your WordPress Dashboard. Some of the reasons could be:

• White screen of death
• Error establishing database connection
• Lost admin privileges
• PHP Errors
• Plugin or theme problem
• Incorrect password issue

How to fix the locked out of WordPress dashboard issue?

We’ll be showing you how to fix the locked out of WordPress dashboard issue. There are various reasons why this happens, go ahead and see whichever method helps you.

Deactivating plugins

As mentioned earlier, the issue might be most likely residing within one of the plugins. You need to deactivate or remove it from your database.

Before we tell you how to troubleshoot the problem technically, try to solve the problem non-technically.

If you use a managed WordPress hosting, all you need to do is submit a ticket and they’ll resolve the issue. You could use a dashboard manager like ManageWP. Try logging in from there, you might login without any issues to deactivate all your plugins.

If none of the above methods work, read further how to solve this problem technically.

To be able to log into your WordPress dashboard again, you’ll have to manually deactivate the plugins.

You must be wondering how to do that?

Well, don’t worry, we’ve got your back.

There are two methods to manually deactivate the plugins:

• Use your File Manager in cPanel
• Use an FTP Client like Filezilla

Read our article on How to deactivate WordPress plugins without accessing WP-Admin, where we’ve explained both the methods in detail.

White Screen of Death

Are you seeing a blank white screen on your WordPress admin? This phenomenon is called the WordPress white screen of death. There are many reasons for this to happen, such as PHP memory limit exhaustion, poorly coded plugin or theme, etc. If you’re experiencing the white screen of death, please refer to our guide on How to Fix the WordPress White Screen of Death.

Error Establishing Database Connection

Sometimes WordPress is unable to establish a database connection, due to which you can see this error on the whole site. There can be various reasons for this as well. Such as your web hosting server is having an issue, your database got corrupted due to some reason, etc. If you’re experiencing this issue, go through How to Fix Error Establishing a Database Connection in WordPress.

PHP errors

PHP errors usually happen while pasting the code from a website.

When beginners start their WordPress journey, they use built-in WordPress editor from their dashboard. Even though this feature is pretty handy, it can be a disaster if not used properly. If you’ve pasted a code from a website which locked you out from your WordPress admin, the only way to fix this issue is using an FTP program. After installing the FTP program, log in to your site. Go to the theme file that you had modified, it must be the functions.php file mostly. You’ll have to get rid of the code that you added in there. After deleting the code, re-upload the file, and you should be good to go.

Sometimes, syntax error could also lock you out of your WordPress admin area. Go through our guide on How to fix Parse error: syntax error in WordPress.

Conclusion

It is important to identify the reason behind you being locked out of WordPress dashboard. If the root cause is known, it’s easy to troubleshoot the problem. Hopefully, we’ve helped you solve your problem. If you know any other method to solve it, please share with us in the comment section.