WordPress Admin Panel Showing Up as Hosting Page
You have purchased a new theme for your WordPress site or are in the process of doing so. You have decided to go with a free option, but when you go to set up the site, you notice that the default page is the admin panel. You are a little taken aback, as you did not intend on having your admin panel show up as the home page. This is when things can get frustrating. You are greeted with a login page instead of a logout button at the end of your blogging session, and you do not want to keep logging in all the time. You want your visitors to enjoy their time on your website as much as possible, so you want to ensure that security is not a concern.
What would cause the WordPress admin panel to show up as the hosting page when you are not actually using it as the hosting page?
A Plugin Conflict
There are numerous reasons why your admin panel could be showing up as the hosting page. One possibility is that you have a plugin that is conflicting with the WordPress theme you are using. A plugin is an extra piece of software that can be installed in WordPress to give you added functionality. Some common plugins are the All-In-One SEO Pack and the All-In-One Contact Form Plugin. For more information on plugins, check out this helpful resource from WordPress.
Sometimes, plugins can conflict with each other as well. When this happens, rather than having one cause the issue, you could end up having both. To find out which plugins are causing trouble, simply deactivate one by one. If one of them is causing issues, reactivate it only after you have deactivated the other.
Another possible cause of your admin panel showing up as the hosting page is that you have a plugin that is hijacking the homepage. A home-hijacking plugin, also known as a front page plugin, allows you to choose what page the site loads up when someone visits your site for the first time. The only requirement for this plugin is that you must have a single home page in your WordPress install. If you do not have a single home page, then you should not use a home-hijacking plugin, as they may cause more problems than they are worth. If you go this route, make sure to backup any existing pages before you alter the structure of your WordPress install.
Improper Permalink Configuration
A permalink is simply the URL that appears when you are commenting on a blog post or navigating to a specific page from a blog post. Your permalink structure can be configured using the settings found in your WordPress admin panel. The default setting for permalinks is pretty cool; it takes the pattern of your URL (the part that comes after the WordPress installation’s URL) and turns it into a friendly, clickable link. Your permalink settings will only take effect once you have posted at least one blog article.
If you decide that you want to try a different setting for your permalinks than the one they are set up to be, you can do so using the Permalink Settings button found in your WordPress admin panel. You will see a screen similar to the one in the photo above. You can choose from a list of options, including the classic permalink, the SEO-friendly permalink, or the clean-cut permalink. Once you have chosen the appropriate setting, click Save Changes at the top right of the page to make your new permalink configuration active. You will need to visit your blog’s dashboard again to make sure the setting has taken effect.
A Bricked Website
A bricked website is one that you cannot get back up and running again once it has been disabled or deleted. This could happen if you were using a free hosting service and did not take the time to register the domain name and set up a dedicated hosting account. The chances are you will not be able to get your site back up and running on the free hosting service you have chosen. Keep this in mind if you are ever in the process of choosing a free hosting service and do not want to spend the effort of fixing a broken website later on.
Browsing To The Wrong Address
If you are unable to log in to your WordPress dashboard when trying to visit the site, then it is likely that you are accidentally browsing to the wrong address. When you are logged in, the address bar at the top of your browser will show the full, sitewide URL to your WordPress site, blog.yourwebsite.com. If you ever forget the www. or set up your DNS to direct blog.yourwebsite.com to a different IP address than www.yourwebsite.com, then you could see this issue as well. Having the wrong address in the address bar could cause you to mistakenly post comments on your own site or to click on malicious links and then infect your computer with malware.
To prevent this, make sure you always use the www. whenever you are referring to your WordPress site’s URL. If you ever forget, you can also use the WordPress @ email address to send a tweet with the correct URL in the tweet’s text. This could help others who may be struggling to find the correct URL as well.
An Old Version Of WordPress Installed
Sometimes, the issue can be traced back to an old version of WordPress being installed on your site. To prevent this error, be sure to always keep your WordPress update cache disabled. This will help prevent you from inadvertently installing old versions of WordPress on your site. If you use an automatic updater like WP-Auto-Updater, then you should know that it updates WordPress automatically and downloads patches and security updates as well. You should only update WordPress when absolutely necessary, as performing frequent updates could cause performance issues and security vulnerabilities.
A Compromised SSL Certificate
An SSL certificate is a small file that is attached to each website as an extra layer of security. It is used to encrypt all transactions that take place on a website, ensuring that they are confidential. Each website that uses HTTPS has an SSL certificate, but it is not necessarily the case that every site needs one.
The most common and free SSL certificates that you can get are called Let’s Encrypt and Thawte. These certificates are provided by third-party companies such as Let’s Encrypt and Thawte because browsers and other software such as web servers do not always play nice with each other and could therefore become insecure if they were to use the same certificate. The benefit of this is that when a new certificate is installed, all the old certificates become invalid and have to be replaced by the new one. This ensures that all transactions on a website are properly encrypted and cannot be decrypted by anyone other than the site owner.
If you use a free SSL certificate on your website and it starts acting up, then it could be the result of your own negligence or a fault in the certificate itself. In either case, you should contact the company that provides the certificate and ask them for help. If they are unable to provide you with assistance, then you should consult a professional SSL certificate review company to see if your certificate is truly up to date and should not be placed in quarantine due to suspicions of misuse or compromise.
A Malformed Robots.txt File
A Robots.txt file is a simple text document that tells search engine spiders (aka robots) what pages they should and should not be looking for. Your Robots.txt file should not be named robots.txt, as this is the convention used by WordPress. Your robots.txt file should be saved with a.txt extension and be saved in the root directory of your WordPress install.
If the file is not in the root directory, then it will not be found by search engine spiders, and your site may appear unreachable to search engines like Google. In case you missed the point above, be sure to always use www. wherever you can when referring to the root directory. For example, if you are on a page at www.example.com, then you should always use www.example.com in your searches to ensure that you find the correct page.
A Disabled Plugins
Sometimes, a plugin can be disabled from appearing on the WordPress dashboard, but this does not always mean that it does not exist. For instance, if you use the All-In-One SEO Pack plugin on your site, but you have not activated the SEO framework inside the plugin, then you will not see the option to activate it on the WordPress dashboard. However, go to the plugin’s settings and you will see that it is still present and fully functional. This type of situation can be frustrating if you are unaware of its presence.