Are you new to WordPress and wondering how to login to WordPress? Or have you forgotten your WordPress user login credentials? Then, this guide is for you.
Without logging into your site’s WordPress dashboard, you won’t be able to do anything. It’s where all the magic happens. There, you can add, manage, and control your content the way you like!
That’s the reason, it’s important to keep your WordPress login URL safe and secure. To guard your site against hackers and malware.
So, in this guide, we’ll explain how to find your WordPress login URL and how to sign in. We’ll also show the ways to protect your WordPress login security. Let’s start!
Video Guide – How to Login to WordPress?
Prefer watching a video instead? Here’s a complete video guide on how to login to WordPress.
Nevertheless, keep reading if you prefer a written tutorial!
A. What is WordPress Login? Why is it Important?
First, let’s have a quick look at what a WordPress login is and its significance.
After installing WordPress, the first thing you would like to do is log in to WordPress. For that, you should find your WordPress website’s login page.
A WordPress login page is a door that keeps you from accessing the management dashboard of your WordPress site.
Once you’ve logged in, you’ll come across your dashboard. The WordPress dashboard is the main admin area from where you can add content, change your templates, and add plugins. It also lets you make other customization to your site.
So, creating and customizing a site would be impossible if you can’t log into your dashboard. Hence, it’s crucial that you know your WordPress login URL and have the login credentials.
As we’re talking about the login page, two user login credentials make it possible to access the admin area. They are username and password. Hence, remember these two fields and keep them safe somewhere where nobody else can have access to them.
B. How to Login to WordPress? (Ultimate Guide)
Always remember that WordPress admin login credentials are set during the WordPress installation. Now, let’s see how to find your WordPress login URL and log in.
Logging in to WordPress is pretty simple. Enter your site address or the domain name in your browser’s address bar. Add ‘/wp-login.php’ at the end of your site’s URL and load the page.
For instance, if your domain is ‘www.example.com‘, then your website login URL is ‘www.example.com/wp-login.php‘. Once you load your login URL, you’ll find your WordPress login page that looks like the screenshot below.
Alternatively, you can also add ‘/login/’ or ‘/wp-admin/’ at the end of your WordPress site URL to log in. Hence, a WordPress login URL can look like any of the examples below.
- www.example.com/wp-login.php
- www.example.com/login/
- www.example.com/wp-admin/
These URLs will take you to your WordPress login page from where you’ll enter your username and password. Then click the ‘Log In‘ button. That’s all, now you’ll be logged in!
i. Accessing the WordPress Admin Dashboard
Once logged in, you’ll reach the admin dashboard of your site. It looks like the screenshot below.
If you don’t see the dashboard, then you can also access the admin page by entering these URLs:
- www.example.com/admin/
- www.example.com/wp-admin/
Once you find the WordPress admin dashboard, you can start using it. Like customizing your website settings, changing themes, adding plugins, creating content, and publishing them.
ii. Logging into WordPress on a Subdomain
The above method for WordPress login is helpful when WordPress is within the root of your domain. Meaning when the main domain uses WordPress. But if you’re using WordPress only for a subdomain, then you’ll have a different login URL.
A subdomain is an additional part of your main domain that organizes and navigates to different pages of your website. You can create multiple subdomains on your main domain.
For instance, if your domain name is ‘www.example.com‘, then you can have subdomains like these: www.store.example.com, www.blog.example.com, www.uk.example.com, etc.
Now, if your WordPress site is on a subdomain, then you should add ‘/wp-login.php‘ after your subdomain URL to log in.
For instance, if your WordPress site subdomain is ‘www.store.example.com‘, then your login URL will be: ‘www.store.example.com/wp-login.php‘.
Hence, the login URL for WordPress on a subdomain can be like below.
- www.subdomain.example.com/wp-login.php
- www.subdomain.example.com/login/
- www.subdomain.example.com/wp-admin/
iii) Logging into WordPress on a Subdirectory
A subdirectory is a part of the URL that houses a particular subset of content. In other words, it’s a child directory that stays under the parent directory as a subfolder.
Subdirectories or subfolders are the most straightforward way to organize related pieces of your site’s content. Also, they’re useful if you like to style a section of the same site differently.
For example, if you want a ‘Blog‘ section on your website, then you can place the blog as a subdirectory. So if you wish a different design for your Blog page from that of the root directory then, you would like to install WordPress separately and apply the desired theme to it.
So, if your main website address is ‘www.example.com‘, then you can have a subfolder ‘www.example.com/blog/‘ with a different WordPress installation.
To log in to WordPress on a subdirectory, you can add the ‘/wp-login.php‘ to your subdirectory URL. For instance, ‘www.example.com/blog/wp-login.php‘.
Likewise, you can also add ‘/login/‘ or ‘/wp-admin/‘. So, your WordPress login link for the subdirectory would be like the below:
- www.example.com/subdirectory/wp-login.php
- www.example.com/subdirectory/login/
- www.example.com/subdirectory/wp-admin/
C. How to Remember Your WordPress Login URL?
Honestly, we tend to forget our WordPress login link, and then we start pulling our hair to recollect where we’d have saved it. And once we can’t remember it, we start babbling around like a wild GOAT!
One of the easy way to remember your WordPress login URL using your browser’s Bookmark feature. This saves your login URL as a bookmark. Most of the web browsers today have this facility.
Here are the required steps for the respective browsers you’re using:
- Chrome: Click on the “Bookmark/Star” icon at the end of the address bar. Or, simply press Ctrl + D. Or go to Options > Bookmarks > Bookmark this tab.
- Safari: Go to Bookmarks > Add Bookmark. Or, hit ⌘ Cmd + D.
- Firefox: Go to the star located at the right end of the address bar, so that it’ll turn blue.
Once you’ve bookmarked your login URL, you can directly access the link to your site’s login page. That too without having to remember your WordPress login URL off the top of your head.
D. How to Save Login Credentials of the Login Page?
Sometimes, even after you somehow remember your login URL, there’s a high chance that you might also forget your password. So to deal with it you can use Remember Me.
i) Use Remember Me
On your WordPress login page, you may have seen a checkbox labeled ‘Remember Me‘ just under the username and password field. Check that box before you log in.
It’ll then save your username and password for up to 14 days and allow you to remain logged in without the necessity to log in on your subsequent visit.
ii) Use a Password Manager Tool
Another easy and secure way to save your WordPress login credentials is by using a password manager tool.
For example, you can use LastPass. Visit the website and create an account.
After that, you can add its browser extension to your web browser and save your passwords on it. The LastPass extension is available on all major browsers including Google Chrome, Edge, Firefox, etc.
Once saved, it’ll provide you the username and password every time you’re on the login page.
Video Guide – How to Protect Your WordPress Login Security?
Prefer watching a video instead? Here’s a complete video guide on how to protect your WordPress login security.
Yet, keep reading if you prefer a written tutorial!
E. How to Protect Your WordPress Login Security?
It’s very important to protect your WordPress login page. If you don’t, then others can steal user information, install malicious software, and even distribute malware to your users. This could cause severe damage to your business and reputation.
There are several ways in which you can secure your WordPress login page. Ultimately, this secures your website overall. Hence find the methods:
1) Use a Strong Password
Simple yet most effective way to protect your WordPress login page is to use strong password. It means creating a difficult password that hackers can’t easily guess or know.
A strong password should have a minimum of 15 characters. And the combination should contain uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols or special characters like &, @, $, etc.
You can combine the said character types and create strong passwords yourself. Or use online tools to generate strong passwords.
If you’re using a password management tool like LastPass, you can also find that feature. For example, check the image below in which we show how to generate strong password with LastPass Chrome extension.
Plus, there are tools such as Strong Password Generator that would automatically generate the password for you.
Just like in the image below, you only need to set the password length and kinds of characters you want in your password.
Most people seem to use simple and short passwords for their websites. As they find it easier to remember it and may sometimes use the same password for every other account. But this is often not a good practice to follow because it makes the job of the hacker so much easier.
Hence, you need to always create a really strong password to secure a login page. See the image below to find out what a strong password is and what is not.
2) Limit the Login Attempts
Nowadays, hackers attempt to hack into your website by guessing some combination of usernames and passwords. Such types of attacks are called brute force attacks.
To protect your website from such attacks, you can limit the number of login attempts on your WordPress login page. It’s a very simple and straightforward yet highly effective way of keeping your website secure.
For example, you can set users to have three chances to enter the credentials correctly. If they fail in three attempts, then they might be locked out of their account.
You can implement this feature using different WordPress security plugins. Here, let’s see how you can enable this on the free Wordfence plugin and Solid Security plugin.
Limiting Login Attempts with Wordfence
If you haven’t installed the Wordfence plugin, install using this tutorial.
After you’ve installed the plugin, go to “WordPress >> All Options” from your WordPress dashboard. Then, find the “Brute Force Protection” tab on the page. Open the tab and you’ll see options like shown in the screenshot below.
Step 1: Enable brute force protection by clicking the “On” option.
Step 2: Set the number of login failures after which users get locked out. Additionally, you can also set the number of forgot password attempts, the amount of time a user is locked out, etc.
Step 3: Save your changes. Then you can go to your login page and try it yourself.
Limit WordPress Login Attempts with Solid Security
Solid Security is yet another powerful all-in-one WordPress security plugin. It provides you with different login security features.
First of all, go to the “Security >> Firewall” page from your WordPress dashboard. After that, click on the “Configure” tab. Next, go to “Local Brute Force” and then enable the option by clicking the toggle.
After that, you can see the number of maximum login attempts per IP, per user, and minutes to remember bad login.
With these settings, you can control brute-force attacks by hackers.
Also, there are other plugins like Login LockDown and Limit Login Attempts Reloaded to assist you with similar options.
Unless you’re using any exclusive feature on these other plugins, using an all-in-one security plugin like Wordfence is a better option.
For beginners, read guides on what a WordPress plugin is and how to install a WordPress plugin!
3) Upgrade Your Site to HTTPS
Another thing you’ll do is upgrade your website to HTTPS. You can do so by adding an SSL certificate to your website’s domain.
When you upgrade your website to HTTPS, it’ll automatically keep the hackers far away from going to your website. That’s because it encrypts a connection between your server and your browser.
Hence, this encryption makes it harder for hackers to appear around and steal your personal information.
Not only that it’ll also solve your site showing “not secure” on the web address bar issue.
Here’s a list of the best website hosting providers with free SSL for a secure connection.
4) Use Two Factor Authentication (2FA)
Two-factor authentication is a two-step verification that’s used to protect your online account from unauthorized access by adding a layer of security.
Once you have 2FA enabled on your site, just having your login username/email and password won’t allow you login access. You should also enter another set of codes for authentication. Hence, it’s called 2-step verification.
So, even if a hacker guesses your credentials, they’d still have to enter the one-time code to access your site. And that’s just available to you. Hence, it’s a secure way to protect your website.
You can easily set up two-factor authentication on your WordPress login using security plugins, like Wordfence and Solid Security.
Setting Up 2FA on WordPress Login with Wordfence
Go to your WordPress dashboard and navigate to “Wordfence >> Login Security“. After that, you can see a 2FA setup screen just like below.
Step 1: Scan the QR code shown above with the Google Authenticator app on your mobile device. Install the app if you don’t have it already. Once you scan the code, your app will start generating codes.
Step 2: Enter the code generated by your Authenticator app in the field above (123XXX entered as an example above). Then, click the “Activate” button.
You can also download the backup codes and place them safely on your local device.
Once the above steps are complete, you can visit your login page again and see whether 2FA is enabled. For more details, check this documentation.
Setting Up 2FA with Solid Security
Solid Security plugin also lets you add Two-Factor Authentication to protect your WordPress user login page.
To enable the setting, go to “Security >> Settings” from your dashboard. After that, click on the “Features” tab and then “Login Security“. You’ll see the “Two-Factor” option, enable that using the toggle.
Once the Two-Factor setting has been enabled, you should set up the authentication for your WordPress user profile.
Go to the “Users >> Profile” page from your dashboard. Scroll down to the “Security” section at the end and then click on the “Two-Factor Authentication” tab.
After that, click on the “Configure” button.
On the next screen, you’ll find available two-factor authentication options. As you can see on the screenshot, you can set up your email to receive a one-time code every time you log in. Or use backup codes. Or set up with an authenticator app.
You can set up the authenticator app just like we did with the Wordfence plugin. It’s pretty simple to so.
5) Set Up CAPTCHA
Adding a CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) to your WordPress login page strengthens security by presenting a challenge that distinguishes between genuine users and automated bots.
CAPTCHA prompts users to complete a task, like identifying distorted text or images, preventing automated programs from gaining unauthorized access.
This extra step significantly reduces the risk of brute-force attacks, where hackers try multiple password combinations, thus enhancing the overall security of your WordPress site.
You can easily add CAPTCHA to your WordPress login URL using security plugins.
Adding CAPTCHA to WordPress Login with Wordfence
Login to your WordPress dashboard and go to “Wordfence >> Login Security“. After that, click on the “Settings” tab.
After that scroll down to “reCAPTCHA” settings. Now, you need the reCAPTCHA V3 Site Key and Secret Key.
For that, you need to add your site to Google reCAPTCHA admin. You can read this documentation for the help.
Adding CAPTCHA with Solid Security
You can set up the CAPTCHA settings in quite a similar way. Go to the “Security >> Firewall” page first and then click on the “Configure” tab. After that, click on the “CAPTCHA” option.
Enable the CAPTCHA option by clicking the toggle. Then, you need to enter the site key and secret key as shown before. That’s it!
Adding Math CAPTCHA with Hide My WP Ghost
Another method is to add Math CAPTCHA with Hide My WP Ghost to add an extra layer of security to your WordPress login page. This helps prevent brute-force attacks where bots try to guess your password by attempting numerous logins with different combinations.
For that, install and activate the ‘Hide My WP Ghost’ plugin like any other WordPress plugin. With that, you’ll see ‘Hide My WP’ menu on the left navigation. Under it, go to the ‘Brute Force’ settings.
Under the ‘Brute Force’ settings, activate the ‘Use Brute Force Protection’ button. With that, you’ll see the page as shown below.
Now, navigate to the Math reCAPTCHA option. Following that, you can set the ‘Max fail attempts’, ‘Ban duration’, and ‘lockout message’.
Once done, hit the ‘Save’ button. With that, Math CAPTCHA is now activated! Now, any user attempting to log in will now need to solve a simple math problem before gaining access.
6) Inactive Logout
It’s a typical habit that the majority of us leave our accounts open and unattended. Sometimes something may close the browser without logging out of our accounts.
Overall, this bad habit of ours can pose a security risk. Because hackers may find a chance to change your passwords or make unwanted changes to your account.
Hence, you must always remember to sign off when you’re inactive. Also, if you’re using a public computer or unsecured public Wi-Fi, then you must be even more alert.
Unlike e-banking websites, WordPress doesn’t have an auto-logout option when users are inactive. So, you need to implement this security measure using plugins like Inactive Logout.
As this plugin is free and straightforward to install, upon activation, you’ll need to go to Settings> Inactive Logout. Then, simply set the idle timeout and add a logout message.
F. How to Add a Custom Login Page?
If you’re running an online store or any site, then you would possibly need to create and use a custom login page.
When you use a custom login page on your site, you’ll make it look professional and help to create a promising brand for your users.
Using Hide My WP Ghost to Create Login Page
The Hide My WP Ghost is free and easier to use a plugin for creating a custom login page on your WordPress site.
All you have to do is install and activate it via ‘Plugins > Add New‘ from your WordPress Plugin Directory.
With that, you’ll see the ‘Hide My WP’ menu added in the left navigation. Then, go to the ‘Change Paths’ tab, and click on the ‘Lite Mode’ tab.
Following that, you’ll see the prompt page as shown below, and click on the ‘Continue’ option.
Next, navigate to the ‘Admin Security’ tab and enable to Hide “wp-admin”, and Hide “wp-admin” From Non-Admin Users.
With that, you can protect the admin area from unauthorized access. Further, allowing you to block many common security threats.
Further, go to the ‘Login Security’ tab to create a custom login path. For instance, let’s add ‘customloginurl’ and also enable Hide “wp-login php” and Hide “Login” Path. And hit the ‘Save’ button.
Next, you can do a quick ‘Frontend Test’ to check whether the paths are loading correctly or not.
Further, you can also do a login test via your new URL page.
This way, you can create a new URL for your login page and hide the default one. As a result, attackers cannot identify your website’s point of entry.
G. Troubleshooting Most Common Login Issues
Sometimes when you’re logging into your WordPress admin page, you’ll experience various issues. Here are some solutions to some common ones:
i. Incorrect Password
Certain times you’ll remember your email address correctly, but the password you just entered can’t seem to work. Then you can’t log in to your WordPress website. In that case, you’ll click on ‘Lost your password?’ just below the login form.
Firstly, WordPress will ask you to enter either your username or email address related to your account. Secondly, a link to change your password will be sent to your corresponding email.
ii. Database Connection Error
If you’re experiencing the “Error Establishing a Database Connection” error, then there’s nothing to stress about as it is a pretty common issue.
This usually happens when your site is unable to retrieve and display information from the database. This may prevent you from logging into your WordPress admin dashboard.
You can fix this issue by checking your login credentials. And then, confirm that they match the login credentials in your wp-config.php file with those in your MySQL Database.
iii. Cache and Cookies
Cookies are small files stored in your browser’s directory that store information like the website’s name and a unique ID that represents you as a user. So, sometimes you might not be able to log in due to cookies-related issues.
Hence, you might get the following error:
“Error: Cookies are blocked or not supported by your browser. You must enable cookies to use WordPress.“
Similarly, if your browser cache isn’t updated regularly, then you’ll view older versions of some files that support WordPress.
Fixing these issues is damn easy. Firstly, you would like to enable the cookies in your browser. Secondly, you would like to clear both your browser cache and cookies. You’ll clear browsing data by pressing Ctrl + ⇧ Shift + Del in Windows, and ⌥ Opt + ⌘ Cmd + E in Mac.
Then, attempt to log in to your WordPress admin dashboard.
Find out WordPress cache plugins and WordPress cookie consent plugins if you’re interested in them.
iv) WordPress Login Disabled
Sometimes when you’re making too many failed attempts to log into your dashboard, WordPress would automatically disable you from further logging in. If it’s happening because you have forgotten your password then, simply attempt to reset it.
Finally, read our article on how to make a website if you’re a beginner.
Conclusion
We hope this article has helped you with how to login to WordPress. We believe that you can now remember your WordPress login URL. Hopefully, you also have some ideas on how to protect your WordPress login from other intruders.
If you’ve any further queries about WordPress login, then please leave a comment below. We’ll try to get back to you as soon as possible.
Further, read our other blogs on the best Captcha WordPress plugins and how to backup a WordPress site for free.
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