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Yesterday, I tried to clone an online website to localhost for doing some work on my theme.

I did a fresh Wordpress install on localhost and used mysqldump for copying the remote DB to localhost. I copied my theme to themes and finally, I ran UPDATE on site_url and home in wp_options. This process worked fine for me a couple of times in the past.

After doing so, I couldn't log in: when I enter correct credentials, login.php redirects to itself without any error or warning. On entering incorrect credentials, I get the "bouncing" message that they're not right, as it should work.

This problem disappears when I UPDATE current_theme, stylesheet and template to twentyfifteen in wp_options.

That is, I can log in fine when twentyfifteen is activated but as soon as I activate my own theme, Wordpress asks me to log in again which I then can't anymore. Does that make any sense?

Oddly, I can see my site on localhost correctly displaying my own theme as a non logged in visitor! However, I do need the aforementioned MySQL query for setting the theme back in order to log in.

What -if anything- in my theme could cause such symptoms?

On the (OK) live version I run the Rename wp-login.php plugin. I did not install it on the problematic local site but I do see the alternative login URL in wp_options. It seems unlikely to me that this is related to the problem but I wanted to mention this anyway.Result after attempting login

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  • I can't say what is different in your theme, but there are still plenty of URL's to change when you do such a migration. Run a plugin like Velvet Blues Update URL's and update all your URL's accordingly. Then flush your permalinks afterwards
    – Pieter Goosen
    Commented Jul 7, 2015 at 8:20
  • Thanks for the suggestion but it didn't solve the problem.
    – RubenGeert
    Commented Jul 7, 2015 at 14:39
  • You should post your update/solution as an answer, instead of an edit. It's OK to answer your own question, and you can even choose to accept it after 48 hours.
    – Gabriel
    Commented Jul 7, 2015 at 15:34

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Because the problem is theme specific, I guessed that perhaps something in functions.php could be the culprit. I renamed the file to some random string and this resolved the problem.

I then experimented by commenting out sections of functions.phpand discovered that wp_reset_password(...) caused the problem. I needed it only once anyway, so I removed it and I'm now living happily ever after.

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