When you cannot reach the admin, the site is effectively frozen. Content cannot be corrected, updates cannot be run and form messages cannot be read. The symptom is always the same but there are a handful of causes, and what happens on screen after you submit the form tells them apart.
| What you see | What it usually means |
|---|---|
| Back to the login page with no error | Cookies or the address settings |
| The browser complains about too many redirects | The address settings contradict each other |
| A blank white page | A plugin or a theme is crashing |
| 403 Forbidden | Directory protection or a blocked IP address |
| Wrong password although it is correct | The username, a password reset or a break-in |
WordPress signs you in with a cookie. If an old cookie is broken, the login succeeds but the next page load does not recognise you and you land back on the form. Delete the site cookies or try a private window. This one step solves a surprisingly large share of cases.
If the site address and the WordPress address are in different forms, one with www and the other without, the login keeps redirecting to the wrong place. The same fault often shows up as a redirect loop, covered in our guide on too many redirects.
If the admin is blank or throws an error, the cause is nearly always a plugin. Open a file connection and rename the directory wp-content/plugins temporarily to plugins-off. Then load the admin once, so WordPress notices the missing files and marks the plugins inactive. Restore the name and enable them one at a time to see which one breaks the admin. Making the connection is covered in our guide to FTP and SFTP.
Then the server blocks you before WordPress is even involved. The admin may be protected separately with a password or an IP restriction, or your own address has ended up on a block list after too many login attempts. This is covered in our guide on 403 Forbidden.
Try the username instead of the email address and the other way round. If neither works and the reset message never arrives, see our guide on a password reset that does not work. If the account stopped working suddenly and nobody changed it, read our guide on a hacked website, because the first thing an intruder does is create an account of their own and remove the old ones.
Do not reinstall WordPress to get back in. A fresh install does not restore access and it can write over the content. Take a backup before you touch files, see our guide on backing up a site.
We restore access to the admin and find out what blocked it, whether that was a plugin, the address settings or a server side block. If the cause is a break-in, we say so rather than simply opening the door again.
