The admin is supposed to receive an email, starting with WordPress 5.2, with an easy link to click to recover the site.
If that did not happen, it sounds like your hosting provider has disabled PHP’s mail() function, which contact form plugins use. It’s the same function that is used by WordPress to send you comment notifications, or notifications about new users registering on your site.
This is a common safeguard employed by hosting providers when they suspect that another customer on the same server is sending spam emails directly from the server.
Another alternative is that PHP’s mail() function is still active, but spammer activity from the server has already caused any email sent from it to be blacklisted. This would result in the emails being sent, but never received by any email address with basic anti-spam capabilities.
You can check this by leaving a comment on your site and checking if you receive an email. Another alternative would be to use the Health Check plugin and sending yourself a test email from the plugin’s Tools tab to see if it works.
If you didn’t receive a test email, you could try using an SMTP plugin to configure your WordPress site to use your email’s outgoing mail server instead of PHP’s mail() function.
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As for getting back into the site now, try manually resetting your plugins (no Dashboard access required). If that resolves the issue, reactivate each one individually until you find the cause.
If that does not resolve the issue, access your server via SFTP or FTP, or a file manager in your hosting account’s control panel, navigate to /wp-content/themes/ and rename the directory of your currently active theme. This will force the default theme to activate and hopefully rule-out a theme-specific issue (theme functions can interfere like plugins).
That’s excellent thanks James.
I activated Health Check, went to Tools, and sent a test email, which I received.
What does that mean RE: the fact I never received the email about the site experiencing technical issues?
Was the fact the Health Check plugin was not activated stopping the recovery email from being sent?
No, Health Check allows you to check the health the site, like whether or not email can be sent. It is not required to send email.
Double-check the administrator email set at Settings > General in the site’s Dashboard.
Yes, we have the correct email in Settings > General.
Hm, that’s where the email would have gone.
Check your spam folder maybe?
Yes, have checked that thanks James.
Odd, there are numerous reason for why an email at any given time cannot be delivered, so with the three usual suspects out of the way, I’d just hope it doesn’t happen again. 🙂
