After moving Wordpress, login works, but no admin access anymore

Question

After transferring a wordpress from an old ISP to a new ISP, I have trouble with the admin access / access to the dashboard.

The transfer was done by copying all files

Answer 1

When you use search & replace on the dumped .sql file of the original wordpress site to use it on the new one, ensure you covered all. I had the same problem and checking the wp_usermeta table, in the meta_key column I discovered some keys named after the old table prefix. Replacing them fixed my problem.

Answer 2

I have also encountered this message after a migration.

Seems like database prefix is case-sensitive, and if it doesn't match exactly, this is what pops up when trying to access administration pages.

Make sure you check your config.php and set it exactly as your table prefix.

If you use phpMyAdmin to check the tables, you should note that all table names in database tree are displayed in lower case, while in my case the expected prefix was all upper cased.

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phpMyAdmin image: phpMyAdmin

The right prefix in the image is the one that should be used.

I used "<prefix>_usermeta" table to get the prefix WP expected.

Answer 3

For anyone that is still looking for the right answer in my case this what I did to fix the problem of not being able to login to WordPress Dashboard.

In database 'wp_options' table under 'wp_user_roles' option name, all the standard capabilities were missing. Copy those capabilities from database backup or from clean WordPress database.

Answer 4

Turns out that this is a bug within Wordpress 4.6.1 when using your own prefix for DB table names.

Rename to wp_ prefix and change the table names and it works.

Answer 5

It sounds like your problem is with the manually created admin account. The error message you're seeing suggests to me that there's an issue with the permissions assigned to the user.

Can you tell me more about the steps you took to manually add the account?

I'm guessing you added the user directly to the users table but after doing so, did you add capabilities and user level information to the usermeta table?

To give you an example, if I'm creating a user I'd run a query to insert the user into the wp_users table (assuming of course we're on the standard table prefix).

I'd then get the ID of my newly created user and use it to insert two new rows into wp_usermeta.

umeta_id should be NULL and user_id should be the ID of your new user for both entries.

1)
meta_key: wp_capabilities
meta_value: a:1:{s:13:"administrator";s:1:"1";}

2)
meta_key: wp_user_level
meta_value: 10

Further reading: http://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-add-an-admin-user-to-the-wordpress-database-via-mysql/

Answer 6

this may be because of you change the table name manually then this error show. so also change table prefix into the 'usermeta' table in 'meta_key' column

previousprefixthatyouchangeinnew_ to

• yourPrefix_capability
• yourprefix_user_level
• yourprefix_user-settings
• yourprefix_user-settings-time

your problem has been solved.