On local machine can't log in or reset password but I can log in on the live version, user has activation key in database

Question

I'm working on a local copy of a site that is online and I can't log in or reset password for my user and I can't figure out why. I can click to reset the password with the "forgot password" button and it says to check my email but nothing ever shows up. So I checked the database and it says the user has an activation code but no email ever showed up. Any idea what is going on? Is

Answer 1

Your local server probably has problems sending mail. There are ways to fix that, but it is probably easiest to change the password in the database directly. Since you've made a copy of your site I am going to assume you have access to the database through something like PhpMyAdmin. Follow these instructions to change the password: https://codex.wordpress.org/Resetting_Your_Password#Through_phpMyAdmin Short version: find your user in the wp_users table, type a new password in the user_pass column and make sure to select MD5 under functions.

To prevent this problem in the future you could install a SMTP mail plugin. There are quite a few in the plugin directory for this.

Good luck!