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Recover from lost Google Authenticator Code for WordPress admin login

by | Feb 24, 2018 | WordPress | 0 comments

Quite a few months back I had to get a new iPhone as the battery in the phone was swollen and had to be disposed. I had the Google Authenticator mobile app on my old phone and had quite a few sites set up within Google Authenticator. I had set up a WordPress site with two-factor authentication with a Google Authenticator plugin. When you do this, the admin login page will have not only username/password; but also a field to enter the one-time code that is generated from the Google Authenticator mobile app (like shown below):

The issue that I had was that my administrator login to WordPress was set up to use Google Authenticator. What is a person to do??? Well, turns out that the fix is quite an easy one. Details to resolve are listed below.

 

*Note*: Credit for these detailed instructions belong to Juan Monroy over at: https://juanomatic.net/2013/09/did-google-authenticator-lock-you-out-of-your-wordpress-org-account/

 

  1. Log in to your SSH or SFTP account with your hosting provider (alternatively, if your hosting provider offers a web-based folder navigation / admin tool, this will work just as well).
  2. Navigate to the wp-content directory.
  3. Create a directory called disabled or something else that won’t interfere with WordPress. This will be a temporary measure.
  4. Navigate to the wp-content/plugins directory.
  5. Rename (or move) the google-authenticator directory to the wp-content/disabled directory. Type something like…
    mv google-authenticator ../disabled
  6. On your web browser, load your wp-admin page. You’ll see that you will not be prompted for a Google Authenticator code.
  7. Using SSH or SFTP, move the google-authenticator directory back to the plugins directory. If you are still in the plugins folder, type something like…
    mv ../disabled/google-authenticator .
  8. Delete the disabled directory.
    rm -rf disabled
  9. With your web browser, go to your Dashboard and then to the Plugins area. Reactivate the Google Authenticator plugin.
  10. On your Profile page, scan the barcode to add this WordPress account to your Google Authenticator app.