wordpress 403 error on admin login page

Question

I've got a problem here. I have a wordpress site and accidentally changed the http to https and I am not sure that I could change it back. What is sure that it loged me out and when I reload the admin login page it throws an error that my connection is not private and after that I got a 403 Forbidden page.

I have access to the FTP and tried to change the wp_config file, no success. Tried adding this: define('WP_HOME','http://example.com'); define('WP_SITEURL','http://example.com'); it only made the admin page reachable when I entered the user and pass it reloaded the login page.

I also tried to delete the .htaccess file, perhaps it is corrupted, but did not help.

Please help me with this issue.

Answer 1

Look in your Wordpress database, there is a table called wp_options and an entry in option_name called 'siteurl' as the name suggests it holds the URL of your site. Change this back to http and you should be good. There is also an entry for home which will also have a URL for your site to be updated. Alternatively and also a better option, get a site certificate so that you can use https.

Answer 2

I managed to enter the admin page finally! So I added these two lines to wp_admin.php: define('WP_HOME','http://example.com'); define('WP_SITEURL','http://example.com'); afterward deleted the .htaccess file, then deleted browsing history, cleared cache and cookies. After all of this I could enter the admin page.

Then I went to options/general and options/permalinks and saved the setting, it generated a .htaccess file and now it is working.

I also tried removing the two added lines from wp_admin.php after all, but I broke the page so they are going to stay for a while.