Have you got this error when you’ve tried to login to your WordPress admin panel with an account you know should have admin access?
There’s a few things you can try to get this error fixed, so you can get back on track.
Plugins
If you’ve recently installed a plugin which may have caused this message to appear, you can try the following steps:
- Login to your website hosting control panel, FTP or SSH.
- Navigate to the
/wp-content/plugins
directory. - Delete or rename the offending plugin.
- Attempt to access the WordPress admin page.
- If that fails, try again using an incognito or private browser window.
Usermeta Permissions
If you’ve migrated your site, changed your WordPress configuration, or added a user manually, you may have your permissions set incorrectly:
- Connect to your WordPress database via phpMyAdmin or your database client.
- Check whether your WordPress tables are prefixed with
wp_
or another custom prefix, e.g.mysite_
. - Navigate to the
users
table (eitherwp_users
or your custom prefix e.g.mysite_users
) and verify your user exists. Note down your numeric ID. - Navigate to the
usermeta
table (eitherwp_usermeta
, or your custom prefix e.g.mysite_usermeta
) - In the
usermeta
table, search for rows where theuser_id
column matches your numeric ID from theusers
table. - For your numeric user ID, check the
capabilities
anduser_level
are set correctly.- For Administrator users, the
capabilities
meta_value
column should bea:1:{s:13:"administrator";b:1;}
. - For Administrator users, the
user_level
meta_value
column should be10
. - Update the
usermeta
fields if they don’t match the values above.
- For Administrator users, the
- Verify the prefix for the
capabilities
anduser_level
start with the defaultwp_
prefix, or your custom prefix if one exists e.g.mysite_
. - Attempt to access the WordPress admin page.
- If that fails, try again using an incognito or private browser window.