Ever used the Limit Login Attempts plugin to help safeguard against attacks? I usually find this installed on managed hosts like Pressidium and Flywheel and it’s a very nice plugin and does a solid job.
Unfortunately, I get blocked by it now and then which is, admittedly, my own fault as I’m either logging in with the incorrect deets or I failed to configure the plugin to function correctly behind a proxy like Cloudflare. Regardless, when it does get me, it gets me good because it tells me to wait for 20 minutes which drives me nuts.
Fortunately, if you have access to the database, you can totally clear the lockouts in a jiffy using a simple line of SQL. You can run this from phpMyAdmin too so if you have that on a live server, you’re in business.
It’s super simple and basically just empties a value in the wp_options
table. Here’s what you need:
The SQL above will unblock all blocked IP addresses so you are technically allowing anyone who is temporarily blocked to have another go at your server. Not really a big deal and I wouldn’t worry about it much but if you really must only target your own IP address, you can do that too:
Obviously, you’ll want to swap out the IP address in the above with your own!