Can’t Login to WordPress? Try This.

So, I was going about my daily business of logging in to my WordPress admin panels to moderate comments and suddenly I could not login to one of them. Now I KNOW my user name and password were correct, but it kept returning me to the login screen with no error message. If I deliberately put in the wrong password I would get an error message.

Immediately I searched to see who else has had the error and how to fix it. It seems to be a fairly common problem, actually, and it seems to be triggered by upgrading your WordPress version while still LOGGED IN on your account.

How I Fixed It

• Login to your WordPress site via FTP (need help? check my FTP tutorial)
• Back up all of your plugins to your local drive
• Delete all of the plugins in the plugins directory on the server
• Try logging in to WordPress again via the dashboard
• This should fix the problem immediately (I got a message that said my database needed to be upgraded and had WP do it automatically for me – it took less than 10 sec.)
• Once you log back in, re-install your plugins ONE AT A TIME, logging out after each one

3 Essential Steps to Take Before You Upgrade:

• Back up your database
• Disable your plugins
• Log out of your account

I really hope this helps someone else, as I know how frustrating it is to troubleshoot these random issues!