WordPress Login Takes You Back To Login Screen

In one of the weirdest issues I have come across, my WordPress install broke a couple of weeks ago. The problem I was facing was the inability to get to my WordPress Dashboard, every time I would try to login it would take me back to the login screen. No error messages, no warnings of corrupted database either, the situation was very frustrating to the point that I was about to give up on using WordPress.

I started reading about login issues on WordPress.org forums, but there’s so much information there that it was almost impossible to find a solution for my specific problem. I posted a request for help, I just needed a little guidance on what to do or where to start troubleshooting, but it was never answered. I guess that there’s so much people with problems that questions like mine, which were a bit hard to find a solution for, was passed over to see if anyone else could help me out, but the help never got to me.

After two days I decided to take a look at the WordPress documentation, when I typed “login trouble” in the search bar I got to a page explaining how the login sometimes gets screwed and some possible reasons of why. It also had nice detailed instructions on how to start troubleshooting these kind of issues, stuff like clear the cache, clear the cookies, etc. were no help until I finally found the solution while reading below.

The problem seemed to be with my wp-config.php file, one of the parts of the document that explained basic troubleshooting for login issues advice me to erase the wp-config.php and re-create the document with a new one from a new WordPress install download.

I renamed the document, that way I could see what changed after re-creating the document, I also renamed the plug-in folder to make sure all plug-ins where deactivated. I had to do it this way because I couldn’t access any part of my WordPress admin pages, after creating the new wp-config.php everything worked normal. I was relieved because I tried several other remedies before re-creating my wp-config.php file and I was getting really frustrated.

I lost a lot of traffic, I can tell my visitors just got as frustrated as I did. This gave me several ideas, for one, how about a simple file that you can put as a splash page when your WordPress site is down and you can’t figure out what’s wrong fast enough. How about a way to deactivate all plug-in when you are locked out from your WordPress install for whatever reason, that way you can troubleshoot without the worry that it’s actually a plug-in the problem. I will be working on some of this ideas, if you know on any developer that has similar work, let me know so that I can point my readers to them, please share them with me by leaving a comment.

I still wonder what went wrong, the only thing I can think of is either the integration of WordPress and bbPress that I tried a couple weeks before the problem started. Maybe an update to any of my many plug-in that went wrong, is it possible that I got hacked and the hacker just decided to make my life miserable by braking my ability to login on my own site.

I don’t know what went wrong but I’ve taken some measures just to be on the safe side. The first thing I did was to disallow registration to my website, I do allow new registration on my bbPress side but my WordPress install does not need for any registration to navigate. The comments are being managed by intense debate leaving me with no excuse to keep allowing registrations to my website.

I minimized the amount of plug-ins on my WordPress installation, I went from fourteen plug-in, to only five, and I plan to keep it that way. I’m not sure if any of this plug-ins was the cause of my misery but it is certain that the ability for a plug-in to know that it needs to be updated worries me a lot.

I hope you get something out of my experience, if you have questions, comments, or you just want to share your own experiences, feel free to leave a comment on my site. I will follow up all comments in the order they are received. Also, don’t forget to follow me on twitter if you use twitter, or friend me on facebook, thanks for reading, bye.