How to Login to WordPress (Find Your WordPress Login URL)

To log in to a self-hosted WordPress site, add /wp-admin/ to the end of your domain, for example https://yoursite.com/wp-admin/. WordPress sends you to the login form at /wp-login.php, and after you sign in you land on the dashboard.

If your site is hosted on WordPress.com, or you are trying to sign in to a WordPress.org account for the forums or plugin directory, those are different logins with different addresses. The table below shows which one you need.

Which WordPress Login Do You Need?

If you are logging in to…	Go to	Use these details
Your own WordPress site (self-hosted)	yoursite.com/wp-admin/ or yoursite.com/wp-login.php	The username or email and password for that site
A site hosted on WordPress.com	wordpress.com/log-in/	Your WordPress.com account (email login link, Google, Apple or GitHub also work)
WordPress.org (support forums, plugin and theme directory)	login.wordpress.org	Your WordPress.org account, which is separate from any site you run

A WordPress.org account does not log you in to your own website, and your site password does not work on WordPress.org. The naming trips up almost everyone, and our explainer on who owns WordPress sorts out which is which. The rest of this guide covers the first row: self-hosted sites.

Video Tutorial

The video below will answer the question “How do I login to WordPress?”.

Don’t have time for a video? keep reading below.

How to Find Your WordPress Login URL

You can login to the WordPress admin dashboard with the URL below:

https://yourwebsite.com/wp-admin/

So if you have a new WordPress install you can access your account at that URL. If you have WordPress installed in a subdirectory your login URL will include the subdirectory. For example yoursite.com/folder/wp-admin/.

In addition to the /wp-admin/ URL you can access the WordPress login page with this URL:

https://yourwebsite.com/wp-login.php

You can use the username and password you set when initially setting up WordPress.

Both of these URLs will log you into WordPress.

WordPress also accepts a few shortcuts. Since WordPress 3.4, core redirects /login to the login page and /admin or /dashboard to the admin. Two catches from the core source: it only works with pretty permalinks turned on, and only when nothing else lives at that address. If you have a page, post or redirect at /login, that wins, so /wp-admin/ is the address to remember.

If you forgot your WordPress password, click the “Lost your password?” link under the login form. WordPress emails you a one-time link to set a new password. If that email never shows up, skip to the reset section below.

If /wp-admin and /wp-login.php both return a 404, a security plugin has probably moved your login page. Look for the custom URL in the plugin settings or in an old email to yourself. If you cannot find it, deactivate the plugin by renaming its folder over SFTP (covered below) or ask your web host to do it. Many hosts also put a “Log in to WordPress” button in their control panel that skips the login page entirely.

If you see “Error: Cookies are blocked or not supported by your browser”, WordPress set a probe cookie called wordpress_test_cookie and your browser did not send it back. Work through these in order:

1. Clear cookies for your own domain and try again. A stale or corrupted cookie from a previous session is the most common cause.
2. Purge your caching plugin and any server cache. If a cached copy of the login page is being served, the probe cookie never gets set. This is the fix people miss most often, and it is the one WordPress’s own documentation calls out.
3. Check your site address if you have just moved or migrated the site. A mismatch between the URL you are visiting and the one saved in Settings, typically www versus non-www or http versus https, means the cookie is set on one hostname and read on another.
4. Confirm cookies are enabled at all in your browser. Private windows and strict privacy modes sometimes block them entirely.

One thing you can skip: third-party cookie settings. WordPress login cookies are first-party, set on your own domain, so blocking third-party cookies has no effect on this error.

A closely related but different message, “Cookies are blocked due to unexpected output”, means a plugin or theme printed something before WordPress could send the cookie headers. That one is a server-side problem rather than a browser one, and our error log explainer will usually name the file responsible.

When You Cannot Get In At All

Finding the URL is the easy half. These are the situations where the URL is right and you still cannot log in.

The login page reloads instead of logging you in

You enter correct details, the page refreshes, and you are back at the login form with no error. This is the login redirect loop, and it is almost always the same cookie problem described above: something is preventing the session cookie from sticking. Purge your cache first, then check that the site address in Settings → General matches the URL in your browser bar exactly, including www and https.

The reset email never arrives

Plenty of WordPress sites cannot send mail reliably, so “Forgot Password” is not always a way back in. If you have hosting access, you can set a new password directly.

With WP-CLI, which most decent hosts provide over SSH:

# find your user ID or login name
wp user list --fields=ID,user_login,user_email,roles

# set a new password for that user
wp user update 1 --user_pass="a-long-unique-password"

Our WP-CLI commands guide covers more of these. If you have no shell access, most hosts offer phpMyAdmin, where you can edit the user_pass field on the users table and set the format to MD5. WordPress detects the old hash format on next login and silently upgrades it.

A plugin or theme broke the site

If the login page is blank or throws a fatal error, you are not locked out so much as the site is down. Rename the offending plugin folder over SFTP to deactivate it, or rename the whole plugins folder to disable everything at once and get back in. Our guides to the white screen of death and reading a WordPress error walk through both.

Too many failed attempts

Security plugins lock out an IP address after repeated failures, and they will happily lock out the site owner. Most send an unlock email. Failing that, connect over SFTP and rename the security plugin’s folder in wp-content/plugins, log in, then rename it back and allowlist your own address.

Should You Change Your Login URL?

Moving the login page away from /wp-login.php is popular advice, and it is worth being clear about what it does and does not buy you.

It genuinely cuts noise. Automated bots hammer the default path constantly, and moving it makes most of that traffic miss, which shows up as fewer failed logins in your logs and slightly less load. What it does not do is make a weak password safe. Anyone targeting your site specifically can still find the login page, so treat this as tidying rather than defence.

The protections that actually matter are a strong unique password, two-factor authentication, and limiting login attempts. Our guide to securing your WordPress login covers those in order of how much they are worth.

One practical warning if you do change it: write the new URL down somewhere outside the site. If you later disable the plugin that moved the login page, the path reverts, and if you forget which plugin did it you can end up locked out of your own admin.

How to Remember Your WordPress Login URL

The easiest way to remember your WordPress login URL is to bookmark it in your web browser.

Here’s how to bookmark a page in most browsers:

• Google Chrome: Bookmarks > Bookmark This Tab
• Firefox: Bookmarks > Bookmark This Page
• Safari: Bookmarks > Add Bookmark
• Edge: Click the star icon to the right of the address bar

Once you bookmark the page in your browser you’ll have easy access to your admin in your browser’s bookmarks. Once you are logging in regularly, WordPress also periodically interrupts you with an admin email verification screen, which you can switch off.

Add a login link with WordPress widgets:

Once you are logged in, you can put a login link on the site itself. Core has a Login/out block that shows “Log in” to visitors and “Log out” to you. On a block theme, add it in Appearance > Editor to your header or footer template. On a classic theme, go to Appearance > Widgets and add the Login/out block, or the older Meta widget, to a sidebar or footer area.

The Meta widget includes login, logout, RSS and WordPress.org links. The Login/out block is the tidier choice if you only want the login link.

Customizing your WordPress Login

We also have a few additional guides if you’re looking to modify your WordPress login more.

This includes changing the design of your WordPress login by customizing your login page. Additionally if you want to hide your WordPress login page you can follow our guide to changing your WordPress login URL. This can help prevent bots from finding your WordPress login page. For the part that actually protects it, see our guide to WordPress login security.

WordPress Login FAQ

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If you have any questions about your WordPress admin login you can ask it in the comments below!