WordPress allows unlimited login attempts by default and after installation WordPress often recommends you to install a plugin name called “Limit Login Attempts”, which stops brute-force attacks and optimizes your site performance by limiting the number of login attempts that are possible through the normal login. It will block an IP or username from making further attempts after a specified limit on retries has been reached which makes brute-force attack difficult or impossible.
Once a hacker uses trial and error methods to guess login credentials to break into WordPress sites, they can take full control of your site. They may install malware, and backdoor, deface your site, advertise and sell illegal products, steal your user’s data, spam your site visitors and execute other malicious activities.
Getting login locked in your WordPress site by limiting the number of login attempts is one of the most annoying things ever. In this tutorial blog, you will know a few simple tricks to unblock too many login attempts for a WordPress site. By this method, you can get to your dashboard without waiting for 20/30 minutes. This method is tested and is the best route to unlock the WordPress site in 2022.
Method 1: Unblocking Limit Login Attempts Using FTP
The FTP method is the simplest and easiest way or solution to get into the WordPress dashboard whenever you face the ‘too many login attempts’ error message.
Step 1: You can just log in to CPanel
Step 2: Click on ‘File Manager’, which opens in the next tab.
Step 3: Double click on ‘wp-content’ folder.
Step 4: Double click on the ‘plugins’ folder.
Step 5: Once you are on the plugins folder, you can simply delete the ‘limit-login-attempts-reload’ or ‘loginizer’ plugin or rename the folder. By doing this you can now login to your WordPress Dashboard area.
When you are ready, don’t forget to reinstall and activate the plugin in case you have deleted or just rename it to its original folder name if you have just renamed it before.
Method 2: Unblocking Limit Login Attempts Using MySQL
In comparison to Method 1, Method 2 is little advanced and users who are somewhat familiar with MYSQL and phpMyAdmin may like to use it for resetting login attempts on WordPress by using a SQL query that will clear all lockouts.
In this method, we will use a SQL query that will target the WordPress database specially wp_options and reset your login attempts.
The very beginners on WordPress may be unfamiliar with MySQL and phpMyAdmin, so we will go through it step by step:
If you have login detail of your hosting dashboard ie. CPanel, just log in to it or you may ask for login detail of CPanel to your hosting provider:
Step 1: Go to the “phpMyAdmin” icon under the ‘Databases’ section. This will launch phpMyAdmin in a new browser window.
Step 2: Then, select your required database on the left panel of the page if it is not selected.
Step 3: After that, click on the SQL tab on the top right of the page and paste the following query:
UPDATE wp_options SET option_value = ” WHERE option_name = ‘limit_login_lockouts’ LIMIT 1;
Note: Upper query assumes that your database has a ‘wp_’ prefix. If your database has a different prefix then you should change it to the query before moving further.
Then, click on the “Go” button at the bottom right of the page to execute the query, which will show you a message confirming that the query was successful.
In this way, you can reset all the login attempts on WordPress using SQL query and you can then login to your WordPress admin dashboard.
The Unlock Only Your IP Query:
If you want to unblock your specific IP Address then, you can run a query like this instead:
UPDATE wp_options SET option_value = REPLACE(option_value, ‘198.63.28.159’, ”) WHERE option_name = ‘limit_login_lockouts’ LIMIT 1;
Make sure to update your IP Address and the database table prefix if you changed your database prefix. You can find your IP Address just by clicking Here.
We hope this tutorial blog helped you to solve your problem in WordPress, you can also bookmark it for the next time you lock yourself out of your WordPress website.
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