Do you need to give admin access to 3rd party developers or plugin developers?
If so, you probably don’t want to give these people a permanent account on your WordPress website.
You only want to give them temporary access for when they need it so that they can’t comes back to login and mess around with your site without your authorization.
Today I am going to show you how to allow temporary login and admin access for anyone you think that needs it, without jeopardizing the security of your site. I will even show you how to extend access for these users in case you work with them a couple days each month but still don’t want to make them a user.
Temporary Login Without Password Plugin
The way that we are going to let people get admin access to your site without a password is through a plugin called Temporary Login Without Password.
I use this plugin whenever I need to give admin permissions to some of my favorite support teams including WPMU, A2 Hosting, Advanced Coupons and other hosting/plugin developers.
This plugin is free so all you have to do is search for it in the WordPress plugin repository, install it and activate it.
Once you install and activate it, you can find the options for it under Users > Temporary Logins.
Once you are on this page, you can do a variety of things including creating new temporary logins and extending current temporary logins.
To create a new temporary login, you want to click on Create New. A box will popup where you can fill in details to create the temporary login:
The only field that is needed is the email field. All other fields aren’t necessary but you may want to add details or change the default selections based on who you are making the temporary login for.
I usually only give temporary admin access to my paid plugin providers or verified plugin support people, so I always give them admin access so they can do anything they need to do on my site.
I usually give the expiry one week in case they need a couple of days to work on it. You can always extend this later too.
Lastly, you can set the language in case any of your developers use a different language.
Extend Your Temporary Logins
If you want to extend the expiration of your temporary logins, go to a current login and click on the pencil icon to edit the temporary login:
Once you click on the pencil, you will see the temporary login person’s email will be autofilled. Then you can choose how long you want to extend the expiry and then click on submit:
Once you click on submit, you can then give the link for temporary login again. You can get that link by clicking on the link icon next to the user’s name.
In Conclusion
So that is how I give login access to my WordPress support people.
Do you find this much easier than creating brand new users and also much less risky than giving people access via users?
Comment below with your answer and we can converse!