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One of the most popular ways attackers are able to compromise WordPress sites is through a brute force attack. Through this method, they can try large number of passwords in a very short time. If your password can be easily guessed, there is a higher chance of an attacker gaining access.
In this post we will be covering how to add reCAPTCHA to your WordPress site. This can effectively shut down bots that are trying to abuse your pages, especially your login page.
To begin, you will need to log in to your admin section of your WordPress site. Go to Plugins > Add New, on this screen search for “captcha”. The plugin I have used and have not had any problems with is the “Advanced noCaptcha & invisible Captcha” plugin. Click “Install Now” , “Activate”, and then click settings.
For this next step a Google account is required. Go to this link:
https://www.google.com/recaptcha/intro/v3.html# and click Admin console on the top right. Fill in the label field with your domain name, be sure to choose reCAPTCHA v2, enter your domain, and accept the Terms of Service.
Click submit to be given your “Site Key” and “Secret Key”, go back to the settings page for the plug in and paste the keys in there. Fill in the rest of the fields as needed. **I would highly recommend testing it on only the Comment Form first and not the Login as it can lock you out if done incorrectly. ** You can also set how many attempts are allowed before a user is prompted, the default is set to always ask.
Click “Save Changes”, then visit a comment section on your site. The result should be the newly added reCAPTCHA prompting you to verify you are not a robot.
Congratulations! You can now go back to the settings page and enable it on the log in page, as well as any other pages you would like to protect from bots. Should you encounter any problems during the process please open a support ticket.
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When I see one of these tickets, I know I’m in for the long haul. I’ve seen this problem a handful of times and each time the solution was different and less obvious than it’s predecessor. So instead of struggling to remember what it was I had done the previous time that succeeded , I decided to consolidate some of the fixes into this blog post.
1) Check your database.
In the control panel go to the MySQL icon and look for “Usage”. If you reached the assigned quota for that database, you may have found the issue. You will either have to raise the quota or if you have reached the max quota for the account, then you will have to free up some space. Once you make this change check back in an hour and your login may start working again.
2) Disable Plugins or Themes.
If you recently installed a new plugin or theme when you encounter this login problem, that may be the culprit. Connect to your site via FTP, navigate to the “wp-content folder”, and find your “plugins” folder. Try renaming the “plugins” folder to “pluginszzz” and attempt to log in. If it works, then you know for sure that one of the plugins was interfering with the login.
If the last step did not reveal anything check the “themes” folder by double clicking it. Rename the theme you are currently using to anything so WordPress will revert back to the default theme. If the login is successful then you know the theme was the cause.
3) Define your site URLs in wp-config file.
Connect to the site via FTP. In the root of your WordPress directory look for your “wp-config” file. Download it and open it in a text editor such as Notepad or Notepad++. Add the following two lines to the file, save it, and upload it back to the site.
define(‘WP_HOME’,’http://domain.com’);
define(‘WP_SITEURL’,’http://domain.com’);
***Be sure to change ‘domain.com’ to your actual domain name***
4) Reset your password.
This is a fairly self-explanatory step. Just click on the forgot my password link, reset it and try again.
The above list has been the solutions that worked to resolve the login issue for me, but there could be other resolutions to the login problem that I haven’t encountered yet.
If none of the above successfully resolves your issue, the next step would be to open a technical support ticket so we can try looking into the issue further and find the cause. If we find more solutions we’ll try to post them in the future.
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