“You are banned” following 2-step authorisation

Hi, @rogerlangford

Wordpress core doesn’t provide 2FA, so you must be using a plugin with too strict rules. It happened to me as well to lock myself out of my own site ??

Here’s two solutions:

1. Reset your plugins folder via FTP or the file manager provided in your host’s control panel. This method preserves plugin options but requires plugins be manually reactivated.

• Navigate to the wp-contents folder
• Rename the folder plugins in it to plugins.hold
• Login to your WordPress then go to Dashboard > Plugins yourdomain.com/wp-admin/plugins.php – this will disable any plugin that is “missing”, so all of them.
• Then, rename plugins.hold back to plugins and activate in Dashboard all the plugins except the one causing troubles

2. Use phpMyAdmin to deactivate all plugins.

• In the table wp_options, under the option_name column (field) find the active_plugins row
• Change the option_value field to: a:0:{}. This will deactivate all plugins.
• Then from Dashboard you need to reactivate all plugins, except the one causing you troubles

Hope this helps,
Kind regards!

Thank you so much Vlad for your prompt response – but I am afraid I don’t understand your solutions (because I don’t know what most of it means)!!

Could you possibly do a “WordPress for REAL dummies” answer, which I could try to follow. Otherwise guide me to an article or something that would help.

Thanks

Let me ask you some questions first, so maybe we can find a better solution?

1. Can you contact your hosting provider and ask them to restore a backup? You will loose the changes made since the last backup, so it should be a recent one.

2. Do you have access to any control panel provided by your host?
In order to apply the above solutions you either need access to the control panel provided by your host OR a valid set of FTP credentials.

3. Do any of these words ring a bell? phpMyAdmin, cPanel, Fillezilla?

If you are not familiar at all with any of these, it’s quite hard to do this on your own, but I’ll try to find some tutorials to guide you.

1. I have contacted my hosting provider about a backup.
2. As far as I know, I haven’t got any control panel
3. None of those words ring a bell at all I’m afraid.
Thanks for taking the time with this – much appreciated…even if you can’t offer more help

As far as I know, I haven’t got any control panel

In order to apply the above solutions you either need access to the control panel provided by your host OR a valid set of FTP credentials. I guess you have no ideea about those credentials either?

If that’s the case, unfortunatelly, we can’t help you. You should ask your hosting provider
– How to access the file manager they provide
– How to get a valid set of FTP/SFTP credentials.

Once you have access to a file manager (either via your host control panel, or your FTP client – here’s a tutorial on how to set up FileZilla, a software on your PC, you can easily apply solution no. 1. It’s a very visual process. You will see some directories, like on your PC, and navigate from the main one to > wp-content, find plugins folder and simply rename it (right click > rename).

I can’t give you a specific tutorial for your host control panel, because I don’t know what exactly that is. The most common is cPanel – here’s a tutorial on how to use File Manager in cPanel.

These subjects are outside WordPress and the best thing you could do, is to find help from a developer. You mayconsider hiring someone so that you can give them direct access to the site for a far more efficient fix than we can provide here. Please don’t post not accept any hire offers on these forums! You can try https://jobs.wordpress.net/ or https://jetpack.pro/

Kind regards!

I will pursue your suggestions – thank you for your time and advice.

Oh! Well… there are a few other solutions. Since your IP is blocked by that plugin for failed login attempts:
– try to login from another PC (using another IP) (maybe from work or from a relative’s house or ask a very good friend to log in for you actually that is a no no! ?? )
– just wait for that ban to expire – usually it has a time expiration (it can be a few hours)