“Sorry, you are not allowed to access this page.”

WordPress shows this message when your user lacks the capability required for the page you're opening. If it only happens on one page, the link may lead to a plugin that is no longer active.

If it happens across all of wp-admin, your user has lost the administrator role. That can happen, for example, after a migration where the database table prefix was changed, after a database error or after a break-in. A role editor plugin, such as User Role Editor, can also have removed capabilities from the administrator role.

Check whether it's just one page

1. Go straight to /wp-admin/ on your site.
2. If the dashboard loads, you still have access. Check under Plugins whether the page you tried to open belongs to a plugin that has been deactivated or deleted.
3. If you get the message here too, your user has lost the administrator role. Move on to the next step.

Ask another administrator to check the role

If the site has another administrator, they can fix it in wp-admin.

1. Go to Users → All Users and click your username.
2. Set Role to Administrator.
3. Click "Update User".

If you have SSH and WP-CLI, this command does the same:

wp user set-role username administrator

Check the table prefix after a migration

Your role is stored in the database under keys that start with the table prefix. If the prefix was changed in wp-config.php during the move but not inside the database, WordPress can no longer find the roles.

1. Open wp-config.php with FTP or the file manager and find $table_prefix, for example 'wp_'.
2. Open phpMyAdmin in your hosting panel and check that the tables start with the same prefix.
3. Find your ID in the ID column of the wp_users table.
4. Open the wp_usermeta table and look at the rows with your user_id. Two of them should have wp_capabilities and wp_user_level in the meta_key field, with your prefix instead of wp_.
5. In the wp_options table, the row holding the roles should be named wp_user_roles, also with your prefix.
6. If any of these keys still has an old prefix, change it to match wp-config.php.

Give the user the administrator role in the database

If the rows are missing or empty, add the values yourself in wp_usermeta for your user_id. wp_capabilities should have this value:

a:1:{s:13:"administrator";b:1;}

wp_user_level should have the value 10. Log out and back in afterwards.

If the wp_user_roles row in wp_options is empty or broken, every user loses their permissions at once. The safest fix in that case is to restore that row from a backup. With WP-CLI, wp role reset --all puts the default roles back. Roles added by plugins, such as WooCommerce's, aren't restored.

If nobody has moved the site

If the role disappeared without the site being moved or changed, someone may have taken over the site and removed you as administrator. Change the passwords for the hosting panel, FTP and the database before you do anything else. Put the new database password in DB_PASSWORD in wp-config.php right away, or the site loses its connection to the database. Once you have the administrator role back, look for unknown administrators under Users and change the WordPress passwords.

When you're stuck

Without another administrator, WP-CLI or phpMyAdmin access, you can't give yourself the role back. Whoever holds the hosting account has to give you access. If the roles are missing for every user and there is no backup, a developer has to rebuild them in the database. That takes experience with WordPress databases.