Password Protected Pages Not Working

Started to work again after a mysql server restart, but being buggy again. A bit different this time, it won’t let me into the Front Page of the website, but other pages that should be password-protected are not asking for the password.

In my case the problem were cookies. Now I use only Cookie Notice & Compliance for GDPR / CCPA plugin and I added to .htaccess this short code:

<IfModule mod_expires.c>
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresDefault A0
ExpiresByType text/javascript A0
ExpiresByType application/javascript A0
ExpiresByType text/css A604800
ExpiresByType image/gif A604800
ExpiresByType image/png A604800
ExpiresByType image/jpeg A604800
ExpiresByType image/x-icon A604800
ExpiresByType text/html A0
</IfModule>

@iamjimbob
go to Settings > General, copy the site url, paste into a text file. copy the home url, paste on a line 2 of the text file. highlight the url in the browsers url bar, copy, paste into line 3 of the text file. if there are any differences e.g. http vs https, www vs non-www, there is the issue. i know you already triple-checked this by eye, but this method ensures no slips.

also go into wp-config.php and search on COOKIE_DOMAIN – make sure that’s not set. it really should only affect multi-site installs, but check anyway.

beyond that, i’d need to see this for myself to offer more advice.

I wrote an article compiling all the troubleshooting steps I would recommend here: https://james.revillini.com/wordpress-password-protected-pages-not-working/

Hope this helps someone!

@jrevillini thank you, I didn’t see that message, but it looks like we’ve solved the issue (and seems to be staying fixed so far).

The solution was to move to a different hosting provider.

Everything pointed to the fact that it was a hosting issue and not our installation. The hosting company kept telling us to de-activate plugins, which we had done. Eventually, I thought to create a fresh installation on a sub-domain and it immediately had the same problem.

I also was able to request the hosting company to create a new SSL which didn’t work, and asked them to thoroughly check out VPS setup (caching etc.) but said there were no issues.

I transferred it to a new host and everything worked fine. And while that process was in place, I also thought to upload a clone to Updraft Clone and that also worked correctly.

Ultimately, there are still huge gaps in my knowledge, but in our case all signs point to the hosting company. I would recommend anyone having issues to use something like Updraft to clone their site for testing, and try moving to a new hosting. We chose WPMUDev because it looked easy (and it was) to move the site ourselves. I used their help chat to answer a few quick questions but otherwise it was quick and painless and extremely automated. I’ll post again if anything changes but hopefully this helps someone else fix their issues.

I had this problem, and I don’t know whether my hosting company or the browser caused it, but @goldenbluespiral’s solution (February 8, 2021) worked for me.

I added the code to the functions.php file for my site (it’s a child theme, so it will not get overwritten by updates), and now non-admin users can log in again.

Result! Thanks.

I fixed it!

For me, it was a line in .htaccess file that was causing the issue:

Header set Referrer-Policy “no-referrer”

When I removed it, the “password protected” page started working again.

@greatgarden
Where should the code you provided be placed? Thanks!

<IfModule mod_expires.c>
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresDefault A0
ExpiresByType text/javascript A0
ExpiresByType application/javascript A0
ExpiresByType text/css A604800
ExpiresByType image/gif A604800
ExpiresByType image/png A604800
ExpiresByType image/jpeg A604800
ExpiresByType image/x-icon A604800
ExpiresByType text/html A0
</IfModule>

I got so frustrated with trying the numerous suggestions with no results that I just installed a password protection plugin and that’s working fine…PPWP Password Protection Page Plugin

Same problem, Ada