Administrator Permissions Changed

ccramer14
(@ccramer14)

5 years, 6 months ago

Wordpress version 5.1.8

My website was hacked and the permissions of what an Administrator can do has changed. I have already locked the website down. But now with the Administrator user I have I cannot do anything like download new plugins and themes. I can’t update wordpress, it tells me that WordPress 5.5.3 is available and to please notify the site administrator.

I have two different Administrator users for this site. I have tried using both users with no luck, and I have even deleted a user and made a new one to see if that would fix it and no such luck.

Is there something in the coding I have to change to get the Administrator’s permissions back to normal?

The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)

Moderator Steven Stern (sterndata)
(@sterndata)

Volunteer Forum Moderator

5 years, 6 months ago

https://ww.wp.xz.cn/plugins/reset-roles-and-capabilities/ will do what you need, I think.

Thread Starter ccramer14
(@ccramer14)

5 years, 6 months ago

I gave that a try and it did not work. It is still giving me the notification that says “WordPress 5.5.3 is available! Please notify the site administrator.”

Moderator Steven Stern (sterndata)
(@sterndata)

Volunteer Forum Moderator

5 years, 6 months ago

You might ask the plugin’s author how to work this in your circumstance: https://ww.wp.xz.cn/support/plugin/reset-roles-and-capabilities/

That may be easier than this: https://www.role-editor.com/restore-lost-wordpress-admin-permissions/

Thread Starter ccramer14
(@ccramer14)

5 years, 6 months ago

That did not work either. So according to the DB all the User’s Roles should be reset to what they were originally. My user is set to an administrator in the DB. But yet it is still not working.

I also downloaded the plugin User Role Editor and created a new user with all the same capabilities as an admin and that did not work either.

Timothy Jacobs
(@timothyblynjacobs)

5 years, 6 months ago

Do you happen to have the DISALLOW_FILE_MODS constant set in your wp-config.php file? That would prevent you from installing new plugins or updating Core.

Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)
(@ipstenu)

🏳️‍🌈 Advisor and Activist

5 years, 6 months ago

You still have access to install and activate plugins?

Do you have any user-role plugins besides the role editor? That is, did you have ones prior?

I’ve untangled these before with wp-cli, which let me see that the admins were given the wrong role name but I don’t know if you have access to that.

If you do, I would run wp user list to get a list of the users and make sure the role is set to administrator (not admin). If not, you can use wp user set-role (see https://developer.ww.wp.xz.cn/cli/commands/user/set-role/ ) to force the account to be an admin.

You can also use the role command to reset https://developer.ww.wp.xz.cn/cli/commands/role/

wp role reset administrator

Clemens Arnold
(@clemensarnold)

5 years, 2 months ago

@timothyblynjacobs your info regarding DISALLOW_FILE_MODS was exactly what worked in my case – much appreciated!

johnpaul777
(@johnpaul777)

5 years, 1 month ago

DISALLOW_FILE_MODS

This worked … thx

changed value from true to false

define(‘DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT’, false);
define(‘DISALLOW_FILE_MODS’, false);