We’ve been using IONOS for a few months quite happily with no issues, basically relying upon their Single Sign On (SSO). We were using the single sign on due to the random nature of the login id it creates to get into WordPress. As all was working perfectly, we never bothered to create a direct WordPress user id, a big mistake.
One morning over a week ago, the Single Sign On refused to allow us access into WordPress to maintain this website, first thought was it is probably the firewall, and an IP address that has been banned.
So, as we couldn’t log into the website, what options do we have….
- Delete the whole website and restore from a nightly backup, not the favoured option, though if all else fails, this would work.
- Bypass the firewall somehow, then try to log in
Now we might not be able to log into our WordPress website, but we still admin permissions on the database, which is what is behind most CMS (Content Management Systems). We decided to start with option 2 above.
So, we log into the database and to find the correct table that the firewall uses to ban IP addresses, then delete all the entries. Once done, we tried logging into the website again, yet again IONOS single sign on refuses to allow us access to the website. With quite a lot going on, we had to pause our recovering the website for a few days.
Next thought was to check the database to see if the user id that IONOS uses in WordPress had been disabled, so back into the database we delved, no lockout and we now know the user id of the admin account that IONOS is using. Taking a stab with this new user id and thinking the password might be the same one as we used to log into IONOS, we try logging in again, a complete failure, still no access.
Final roll of the dice, before we have to delete the website and recreate from backups, we decide to create a new admin user in the database table, with a new password, this is a three-step process, creating the id first, then granting the admin permissions.
Finally, we are able to log in to our website again, no more relying on the IONOS single sign-on process.
Learning point for us, don’t rely upon your hosting company for everything, things can and do go wrong.
