Locked Out of WordPress: Create a Temporary Admin With WP-CLI Over SSH, Then Delete It

A lost admin password, a plugin that broke the login, an admin email that no longer exists: when you cannot log in but you can reach the server, WP-CLI gets you back in without touching a PHP file. A temporary administrator exists for a few minutes and then you delete it.

The command

ssh admin_user@yoursite.com
cd /srv/www/yoursite.com/current

wp user create recovery_admin recovery@yoursite.com --role=administrator --path=web/wp

When you leave out --user_pass, WP-CLI generates a password and prints it once. Copy it, log in at /wp-admin, and fix the real problem. On Bedrock the --path=web/wp is needed unless the site has a wp-cli.yml that sets it.

If you want to choose or generate the password yourself, do it without leaving it in the shell history or the process list. The one-liner post shows how.

Then, before you do anything else, think about when you will delete the user. Leaving a recovery_admin account around is a backdoor you made yourself.

Delete it when you are done

# What admin accounts exist?
wp user list --role=administrator --format=csv --path=web/wp

# Delete by login
wp user delete recovery_admin --yes --path=web/wp

# If it ever wrote content, hand that to a real user instead of deleting it
wp user delete recovery_admin --yes --reassign=1 --path=web/wp

The list is worth reading even when everything is fine. An administrator you do not recognise is the first sign of a compromised site, and the security routine post covers what to do then.

The errors you will see

Email already exists, or username already registered. WordPress needs both to be unique.

wp user list --field=user_email --path=web/wp | grep recovery@yoursite.com
wp user get recovery_admin --field=user_login --path=web/wp

Pick another login or address. If the account you already have is the one you are locked out of, wp user update is the faster fix:

wp user update admin --user_pass="$(openssl rand -base64 18)" --path=web/wp

Note that this puts the password on the command line. The one-liner post above shows the variant that does not.

You created the user but cannot log in. Check the role and the email:

wp user get recovery_admin --fields=user_login,roles,user_email --path=web/wp

If the role is right, look at what is blocking the login itself: a security plugin, a login rate limit at the server, or a broken wp-login.php.

Mail from the new user bounces. An admin email that does not exist is also the cause of “WordPress mail not arriving”, covered in the mail post.

Scripting it

The simplest version of this is a script that refuses to create a second account and reminds you to clean up:

#!/bin/bash
cd /srv/www/yoursite.com/current || exit 1
USERNAME="deploy_temp_admin"

if ! wp user get "$USERNAME" --path=web/wp &>/dev/null; then
  wp user create "$USERNAME" "deploy@yoursite.com" --role=administrator --path=web/wp
  echo "Delete it after use: wp user delete $USERNAME --yes --path=web/wp"
fi

wp-ops has an admin-user-create command for the same job, with the cleanup reminder built in.