Title: Admins Cannot Create New Users
Last modified: August 4, 2021

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# Admins Cannot Create New Users

 *  Resolved [Michele](https://wordpress.org/support/users/msustudio/)
 * (@msustudio)
 * [4 years, 9 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/admins-cannot-create-new-users/)
 * Is it possible Wordfence is blocking admins from creating users? Some admins 
   get an error when trying to create a user, but other admins with the same access
   level can create the user with the exact same information. This is the error 
   notice they are receiving:
 * “This username is invalid because it uses illegal characters. Please enter a 
   valid username.”
 * There are no other characters being used other than letters.

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)

 *  Plugin Support [wfpeter](https://wordpress.org/support/users/wfpeter/)
 * (@wfpeter)
 * [4 years, 9 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/admins-cannot-create-new-users/#post-14737158)
 * Hi [@msustudio](https://wordpress.org/support/users/msustudio/), thanks for reaching
   out to us.
 * The error message you’re seeing is not a Wordfence error message and is unlikely
   to be a firewall block if you’re not seeing a branded Wordfence error page.
 * I found a similar case [here](https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/41218) in
   WordPress’ bug tracker where a user was also stopped from creating a user with
   no special characters in the username – returning exactly the same error message.
   It turned out to be an issue with their theme possibly not handling `validate_username()`
   or `sanitize_user()` functions correctly.
 * As general advice I would suggest disabling all plugins except for Wordfence 
   and returning your theme to a default like Twenty Twenty-One, then re-enabling
   one element at a time to see when the problem returns. You may need to then reach
   out to the theme/plugin developer’s support to see if it can be rectified once
   you find the cause.
 * I hope that helps you out!
 * Thanks,
 * Peter.

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)

The topic ‘Admins Cannot Create New Users’ is closed to new replies.

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 * 1 reply
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [wfpeter](https://wordpress.org/support/users/wfpeter/)
 * Last activity: [4 years, 9 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/admins-cannot-create-new-users/#post-14737158)
 * Status: resolved