Locked out of site admin after change of URL

Question

I took over a website's administration from another person. Site was not updated a long time and all I got was the password for the wp-login page. I did some updates to the site, but stupidly, changed the URL of the site (inside wp-admin, general settings) just to test it . Now the site does not work. Neither does the wp-admin. When I put my credentials, it takes me to the "new" URL (WRONG-URL/wp-login.php), which naturally does not work.

Online I found two suggestions.

1. FTP.

I tried accessing through the FTP but get the error below. I tried many google answers but none worked (particularly disabling firewall).

2. cpanel.

I tried to log in through the cpanel, but the password does not work and recovery email is not recognize by previous admin (site was created long long ago and probably only managed through WP).

How can I regain access to the site? Perhaps contacting the hosting company directly and ask them to restart the server, as suggested here?

Answer 1

You need to get access to the database ( and for this you need cpanel access probably ) - commonly, this is via PHPMYADMIN, most hosts have it and then you need to go to the wp_options table and find two references, these are normally on the first and second page of rows - they are:

site_url & home_url

Both should show the new URL you changed the site to - you can edit them to what you want.

As a work around if you have working FTP access, these values can also be hard coded into the wp-config.php file, in the root of the WordPress install - using the two following CONSTANTS:

define( 'WP_HOME', 'http://example.com' );
define( 'WP_SITEURL', 'http://example.com' );

Read more about how here: https://wordpress.org/support/article/changing-the-site-url/#edit-wp-config-php