Messed up my WP after Security Plug-ins

CMS & WordPress
1

It appears I’ve screwed up my WP.

I was installation some security plug-ins advised and those plug-ins now stop me from accessing the admin menu. I tried to restore the SQL but this still did not fix it. I think the plug-ins must have hid the login URL for security measures. I know I should have known better, but I thought an SQL restoration would have solved it, which it has not. I’ve also deleted the plug-ins in the directory,which still did not do anything. Even though it’s my own site I still feel I need to solve this.

The installed plug-ins I installed were:

  1. Plugin CHAP Secure Login
  2. Plugin Login Lockdown
  3. Plugin AskApache Password Protect
  4. Plugin WP-DB-Backup
  5. Plugin WP-Security-Scan

I don’t know if there is somewhere in the SQL database which allows me to see the URL for the admin. I think I’ve really done it this time! :frowning:

2

It might be worth checking the permissions on the /wp-admin directory and checking the .htaccess file to see if there are any rewrites there preventing you from accessing /wp-admin in the normal fashion.

3

/wp-admin, /wp-content and /wp-includes are set to 755. I really want to debug this and get this fixed.

4

Well, if you can’t do anything at all…then remove the offending plugins, get to your admin account and log in, disable them all, and after that re-enable one by one to know who did the job!.

How to remove the plugins? Well, it is a bit drastic but this is as easy as using your FTP account and removed them from the wp-content\plugins folder.

5

By removing the plugin files, you don’t remove the plugin data in your db, though, so I’d clean up the database as well.

6

I’ve deleted the plug-ins in the WP plug-ins folder in the FTP, I’ve also replace the SQL database with a backup. Is there a way I can find the login page in SQL, maybe this would help. The problem is still not resolved after all this, so I am puzzled on what else to do, apart from creating a completely fresh WP installation.

7

So /wp-admin doesn’t redirect you to /wp-login.php?

I know AskApache PassPro messes with your .htaccess files. So it might be worth checking both the wordpress root folder and the /wp-admin folder and removing the AA PassPro sections from their .htaccess files.

8

Nope :frowning: I get a 404 error. I too think the error is AskApache PassPro, I will work on it and see what I find.

9

Thanks for your advice. AskApache certainly did do something in the .htaccess file. I removed all the code it added but it did not fix it.

  1. Replaced the wp-config files with older files
  2. Replaced the SQL database
  3. Replaced the .htaccess files
  4. Deleted the security plug-ins

This situation reminds of when I use to set passwords which were too complex for anybody to remember, in the end I would end up forgetting the password. :stuck_out_tongue:

There is one thing left to do, which I feel would be inevitable at this stage, and this is to completely replace WP installation and start from the beginning. I will eventually isolate the problem. I feel one of the plug-ins changed the location of the WP-admin and WP-login locations, to an undisclosed URL.

Edit: Found this post - http://wordpress.org/support/topic/askapache-password-protect-problem-1. Seams to be the offending plug-in. I will reset the plug-ins folder and see how it goes.

10

I’ve now managed to log in with this /wp-login.php?redirect_to=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.exampledomainname.com%2Fwp-admin%2F&reauth=1, but when you’re logged in you still can’t make edits as I get the 404 message. I’ve reset the plug-ins folder too, but still no hope.

11

I’ve since fix the issue. AskApache created a .htaccess file in the /wp-admin folder which cause the issue. Once deleting this it worked okay. Never using that plug-in again :stuck_out_tongue: