Accessing recovery mode without the email link

There is a ticket for providing a different way into recovery mode, but it isn’t ready yet. https://core.trac.www.ads-software.com/ticket/47192

Meanwhile, you should figure out if your email(sent from your site) is working. The email is sent to the site admin address. It could be in a spam folder.
If you can see the login page, you can use the password recovery link to test the email. If it works, you can set the RECOVERY_MODE_EMAIL constant in wp-config.php to the account email address and trigger the problem to send a new recovery email.

If you don’t see the login page, something is truly messed up, and I would advise that you ask your host to restore from backup. An alternative is to check the error_log on the server to see what plugin is causing a problem. You can rename the plugin’s folder or if you don’t have a log, rename the wp-content/plugins folder so that no plugins are loaded and then log in.

The best way to troubleshoot is using your ftp/smftp to login on your website root folder..Then Rename your plugin folder and reload your site.If it works then one of your plugins maybe causing the site error.

Thank you both for your responses. I am happy to hear that there is something in the works to make it so there is another way to access the recovery mode. I am looking forward to trying it, but fingers crossed I will never need to…

Luckily, I was able to fix the issue last night by simply changing the php memory limit in my wp_config file. From there, I was able to log in and do some cleanup. Whew!

Guys I just updated – WordPressBackUp pluggin and my site is no longer accessible. I received the email from WordPress with a link to enter recovery mode but that link does not work?

Any ideas how I can get my sire back online…

Seems like theres a fair few people with the same problem caused by updating this pluggin in the last few days

we manage a couple hundred wordpress sites and this new feature is causing us a lot of pain. The admin email a lot of times is not set to us. So we are getting locked out of wordpress. We are running on PHP 7.3 and it is likely a plugin issue with PHP 7.3 but the error log files are not giving us any clues because we can’t get into the admin which would generate some error log files normally.

If you are trying to get the email link you can just add this to the end of your wordpress domain name:
/wp-login.php?action=entered_recovery_mode

The email link is just a simple link with that added to the end of it.

I’ve noticed a lot of cache issues with chrome as well. If you end up at wp-login.php page and site won’t load try switching your URL to /wp-admin/

The plugin trick works. Re name plugin directory to plugins2 or whatever. That will force WP to deactivate all plugins and then you can login. Then switch plugins2 back to plugins and you can enable your plugins again. And try to figure out which one caused the issue.

Yes, Recovery mode has saved my butt a couple of times already. I’m so glad they included that feature!

I get the “The site is experiencing technical difficulties. Please check your site admin email inbox for instructions” message, but never get the email.

Per the above, I was able to get to the recovery mode login page, but then when I enter my login/password, I get the error message again.

I tried renaming the plugin folder per instructions and I still can’t log in.

Any other ideas?

I have exactly the same problem like @lstambaugh.

Same problem here. Any idea ?

Sometimes if you are able to login to the WordPress admin, and you get directed to an error page again, if you just go up to your address bar and change your URL to /wp-admin/ the dashboard will load. Sometimes it is cached or chrome is cached.

The plugin trick works. Re name plugin directory to plugins2 or whatever. That will force WP to deactivate all plugins and then you can login. Then switch plugins2 back to plugins and you can enable your plugins again. And try to figure out which one caused the issue.

The other issue we have seen is some wordpress sites won’t run on PHP7 and you get these error messages and can’t login. If your server uses php-fpm you can ask your host to run your site on PHP 5.4 or whatever older version of PHP so that you can login and fix your site.

If this issue keeps happening you really need to look at your Error log and it will tell you which plugin is the problem and you can delete or re name the plugin via FTP access and then should be able to login. Normally what I see is one plugin causing the problem and the plugin can be identified by looking at the error log.

hi sirhihindi in admin mode i facing error of There has been a critical error on your website. Please check your site admin email inbox for instructions.

Learn more about debugging in WordPress.

please send me recovery mode on gmail

why the hell hide the error message for sending the email to the admin? tell me how the f..k i should get the details if im on a local enviroment? install a smpt/mailhog server on a virtual machine just for get an error? you guys are insane

define(‘WP_DEBUG’, true);
define(‘WP_DEBUG_LOG’, true);
define(‘WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY’, true);

ini_set(‘display_errors’, 1);
ini_set(‘display_startup_errors’, 1);
error_reporting(E_ALL);

tell me what else constant should i set to true

I don’t think you really need the email link to fix it and get logged into WordPress admin.

Sometimes I login, get the error, then just switch my URL to website.com/wp-admin/ and refreash reload and I get logged in.

Sometimes I rename the plugins directory to plugins2 and login. This deactivates every WordPress plugin and you can login.

It is normally a plugin issue. One plugin on your site that is causing issues. The Apache error log or Nginx error log should tell you what the problem is.

The plugin causing issues was the plugin i was working on and was caused because the api i was integrating that changed the data type of a property and the error was a simple “data too long for column blabla”. Because this insane error handling i wasted on hour for finding the cause.

If I’m developing a plugin I expect to see all the exceptions thrown when there is a problem. I cannot waste time searching on logs or debug step by step until find the break point.