Hello,
How do I get back into my wordpress account? Thanks.
Short version: 3 weeks ago, logged in, updated a maintenance page, updated some plugins, logged out… since then, my site is dead white and I can a “user does not exist. Would you like to create a new account?” error message every time I tried to log back in.
Long version below:
I’ve had a self-hosted wordpress.org site on OVH hosting since 2017. Back then, I quickly set up a maintenance page via a wp-maintenance-mode plugin to wait until I get to actually start building the site and potentially upgrade.
After a while not being active on the site at all, I had to recently logged in http://gmajou.com/wp-login.php to update an Instagram link on my maintenance page, which I did successfully, but as I was on my administration screen working in the plugins tab, I was prompted by a bunch of wordpress header notifications to update some of my plugins (such as the maintenance page if I remember correctly)…. which I confidently did before disconnecting from wordpress.
Right after that move, I’ve noticed for the 1st time a White Screen of Death when trying to access to my site online + since that day, I’m also unable to connect again to the WordPress dashboard… (user doesn’t exist error page). Not sure how that happened and I’m not really tech-savvy but my guess is that maybe a newly “updated” plugin may interfere with the login process.
So I went digging for answers on the WordPress forum, found a bunch on similar user cases which ended up in the same situation. By logging in to my website via FTP using FileZilla, I was able to “hold” all my plugins which resulted in bypassing the malfunctioned white dead maintenance page and now showing the back end of my site when accessing it on any browsers. But that didn’t fix the issue of being able to log back in my WordPress dashboard.
FYI, my domain name and webhosting is currently still active and I’m using my associated website email address everyday at work. I’ve never changed my username nor my password for the past 4 years.
I’ve read that I can retrieve my password and username in my webhosting account in the database area but I have no clue where to look… and I don’t understand why I’d need to retrieve this info since I never changed it in the first place. I’ve also been reading this page about phpmyadmin but was not able to understand it at all: https://wordpress.org/support/article/resetting-your-password/#through-phpmyadmin. Finally, I’ve been reading the “Login Trouble” page but I’m not sure where to start: https://wordpress.org/support/article/login-trouble/.
If I still want to consider WordPress as my definitive website platform to grow my business over the years, then I’d really need to troubleshoot this one. Today after spending way to much hours trying to fix this on my end, I was close to give it up and move on another platform like Wix to finally build my site but I thought I should at least try to reach out to see if I can get any help from your team first.
Sincerely,
-Gabriel (from Paris, France)
system macOS High Sierra 10.13.6