WSOD- Forgotten password for user admin

  • I am in WP hell right now. First thing, I’m not sure which version of WP my site was using but it was updated this year between Jan-June.
    When I’ve logged in, if it tells me to update- I do it.
    Here’s what happened. I went to log in last week after three months of inactivity and see I “need to update plugins”, which I do. (note- I do have Jetpack on the site if that make any positive or negative influence)
    Once I update the plugins, I have the WSOD. And no way to access through wp-admin.
    To make things worse, when trying to access via Filezilla, it seems I cannot remember my last used password ( it was one of 6).
    So, I’m stuck here with two sites that do not work, I can’t access to repair b/c of wrong password combination and unfortunately my Keychain on Mac did not save them.

    What is my next move here? Any assistance would be hugely appreciated.
    P.S. I’m not a code guy, meaning I learned enough initially to work comfortably with WP but I do not know advanced code writing.

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  • Hey Ben

    The first step here is to get back FTP / cPanel access to the sites. You web host can help with this if you forgot the password. Once you are able to login via FTP (FileZilla) try manually resetting your plugins (no Dashboard access required). If that resolves the issue, reactivate each one individually until you find the cause.

    If that does not resolve the issue, access your server via SFTP or FTP, or a file manager in your hosting account’s control panel, navigate to /wp-content/themes/ and rename the directory of your currently active theme. This will force the default theme to activate and hopefully rule-out a theme-specific issue (theme functions can interfere like plugins).

    Thread Starter ben.banks

    (@benbanks)

    Thanks!! I will try those options and report back!

    Thread Starter ben.banks

    (@benbanks)

    Okay. here’s what happened.
    I was able to regain access thru FTP/ cPanel access to my host’s servers, access the plugins folder and rename it ‘plugins.deactivate’.
    Now, very important for anyone following this- you will need to also delete ‘advanced cache.php’ as well in order to make this work.

    Here are some tips for future. Always write down password and username changes AND what theme you are using. I found I was trusting my laptop to automatically save passwords to everything (it doesn’t) and as far as themes, I had a package of 29 and I simply chose my theme based on how it looked without retaining what the name of it was!
    Live and learn.

    LumberHack, thanks again for taking the time to reply! Very appreciated!

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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