How to RESET iThemes Security plugin to fix issues

Hi, Viktor:

I haven’t touched the woocommerce site today yet, but will do “the same thing (above)” to the woocommerce site later this week. Hopfully the latest version of iThemes Security will go with Woocommerce smoothly. Will see…..

If I find any issue(s), will come back here and look for answers. Thank you, Viktor!

It seems it is working as Viktor says, I just renamed the better security folder in wp-contents to something else. It gave me access to domain.com/wp-admin where I could log in and get to the dashboard. I found that the iThemes Security was deactivated, I deleted the plugin and now reinstalling it again. Hope it works well.

Thanks to Vikotr, as I tried different things changing .htaccess but didn’t succeed.

Simply re-installing and re-activating plugin will NOT delete old database entries and you might be locked out again. If that does happen again, follow the instructions to remove database entries.

When you activate plugin and database entries are present, it simply uses them – it does NOT override them.

I agree with Viktor, I went through this over and over again with several websites I have the Security plugin installed on and had the same problem on all the sites until I used Viktor’s instructions and cleaned out the database and started over.

His solution works but you have to do the whole thing, rename the folder and clean out the database.

Thanks again Viktor! I spent hours messing around with this until I found your post.

Glad I could help Lisa.

I’ve deleted all db tables and instances and followed your instructions but I can still not get into the plugins section on the backend. Only getting Internal server error. Please… any ideas?

That error sounds like htaccess issue. Make sure you htaccess file looks like this, delete everything else.

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

Yeah, I thought maybe that too but it wasn’t, I removed all except your above from my .htaccess file but still the same results.

Same here .. htaccess fix not work on 4.0.12 .. 2 site of 2 with the blank page on the custom-login-slug

edubz, check your wp-config file for anything extra. They do add some stuff in there sometimes. Internal server error is related to hosting so you might be able to get your hosting company to provide support for that. I know they will at least tell you what’s causing it. Also, one thing you can try, rename .htaccess to htaccess.txt to disable it. See if that helps.

silenx, did you delete database entries, made sure htaccess and wp-config files are clean/standard? When plugin is disabled, custom slug won’t work. So wp-login.php will work.

Thank you Viktor – you have been a lifesaver ??

thanx, really appriciate, last 24 hrs have been terrible for my blood preassure. my wordpress still is a bit slow, but at last i can see it (front end and back end)

Victor, you are my hero…
My problem was that the wp-login kept redirecting to https:// and I couldn’t find any solution. Came across your post and followed all your steps but I still couldn’t login, then you post:-

2. Check your wp-config.php file.
Make sure you don’t have these:

define( ‘FORCE_SSL_LOGIN’, true );
define( ‘FORCE_SSL_ADMIN’, true );

If you do, delete them.

worked – all good now, thank you so much.

PS Loved Better WP Security – not so loving iThemes Security – will wait before reactivating plugin. Good luck to everyone having problems.

Hi tmrait, if you deleted all database entries I mention, you should be safe re-activating it. I had no issues. But you never know though.

Viktor
Was wondering if your method will work if I had previously used the plugin to change the database prefix from wp to something else?
Am worried that this feature would have made changes to my wp-config file and once the database entries are erased, it may mess up my site?
Do advise and thanks