Password Protect Your WordPress Admin Directory (WP-Admin)

How To Password Protect Your WordPress Admin Directory (WP-Admin)

As you read the title, you are probably wondering isn’t the wp-admin directory already password protected. You are required to login right. Well that is true, but to add an additional layer of security popular sites often add an extra layer of authentication.

In this article, we will show you a step by step guide on how to password protect your WordPress admin (wp-admin) directory.

Password Protect Your WordPress Admin Directory

Why A Second Username And Password?

For me, personally, I have a WordPress security plugin that notifies me, by email, every time some jerk tries to log in to my WordPress wp-admin. The most frequently entered username guess these hackers try include!

--- admin. Most common guess. Lesson here: when you install WordPress DO NOT USE the default-admin for a username and choose a strong Strong Password.

--- wp-admin.

--- no_matches.

I was shocked to learn that hackers try to access my wp-admin page between 6-15 times a day! I guarantee all WordPress sites experience the same thing. I got tired of getting these emails from my WordPress security plugin so I decided to add an extra username and password so the idiots can’t even get to the default wp-admin username and password form in the first place.

The WordPress wp-admin Folder Already Has A Username And Password

By adding a second layer of authentication security it would take one seriously skilled hacker to be able to get in.

Password Protect WP-ADMIN With Your Hosting Control Panel

This is probably the easiest way as you don’t have to mess with .htaccess and .htpasswd files. Here I will provide examples for Hostgator hosting.

To keep things easy and simple, we will only cover cPanel web hosting companies here just because cPanel has an easy enough interface to add password protected directories.

When you click on that, a lightbox popup will show up asking for directory location. Just click on web root. Once you are there, navigate to the folder where your WordPress is hosted. Then click on the /wp-admin/ folder. You will see a screen like this.

Simply check the box to password protect the directory. Then create a user for the directory. That is it. Now when you try to access your wp-admin directory, you should see an authentication required box like this.

Manual Method

First create a .htpasswds file. You can do so easily by using This Generator. Upload this file outside your /public_html/ directory. A good path would be:

home/user/.htpasswds/public_html/wp-admin/passwd/

Then, create a .htaccess file and upload it in /wp-admin/ directory. Then add the following codes in there.

AuthName "Admins Only"
AuthUserFile /home/yourdirectory/.htpasswds/public_html/wp-admin/passwd
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
AuthType basic
require user putyourusernamehere

You must update your username in there. Also don’t forget to update the AuthUserFile location path.

I Have A 404 Error Or A Too Many Redirects Error

Well this can happen depending on how your server is configured. To fix this issue, open your main WordPress .htaccess file and add the following code there before the WordPress rules start.

ErrorDocument 401 default

Well there you have it. Now you have double authentication for your WordPress admin area. This is a good alternative to Limitingwp-admin Access By IP Address.

Update:- Here Is How To Fix The Admin Ajax Issue

If you password protect your WordPress Admin directory, then it will break the Ajax functionality in the front-end (if it is being used). In our case, we don’t have any plugins that is using ajax in the front-end. But if you do, then here is how you fix that issue.

Open the .htaccess file located in your /wp-admin/ folder (This is NOT the main .htaccess file that we edited above).

In the wp-admin .htaccess file, paste the following code:

<Files admin-ajax.php>
               Order allow,deny
               Allow from all
               Satisfy any 
</Files>

Follow this article, if you still get any error, please notify me in comments, I will try to solve those errors elegantly.

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