How to Recover a Lost Administrator Account

Have you locked yourself out of the WordPress admin area by using the PublishPress Capabilities plugin?

Don't worry, the PublishPress Capabilities plugin stores a backup of WordPress role definitions. You can use this recover access to your site.

Those who are comfortable using phpMyAdmin or another database query tool can do the following:

  • Find the _options table.
  • Search for option_name which is likely to be named capsman_backup%
  • Use capsman_backup if it is available, otherwise you can use capsman_backup_initial. Ensure that you are seeing the entire option_value of this row (not just a snippet of it ending in “…”. In phpMyAdmin, click in to “Edit” the row to see the entire option_value.
  • In another window, search for the option_name %user_roles
  • Update this _user_roles record with the option_value from the capsman_backup row. In phpMyAdmin, this can be done with the “edit” link. Be sure to clear the entire option_value entry box before pasting in the capsman_backup value.