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Shifter Magic Links explained

How Shifter handles, secures, and manages WordPress users accounts.

Tomohyco Tsunoda avatar
Written by Tomohyco Tsunoda
Updated over a week ago

Magic, you say? Yes! It’s really magic. 🎩

Shifter Magic Links are a unique feature in the WordPress ecosystem. They allow our customers to log into their WordPress sites from the Shifter Dashboard with just a click. Here's an overview on each part of the feature.

Features

Shifter and WordPress usernames are synced

When creating a new WordPress site on Shifter the username of your Shifter account is applied during the installation process.

For example; if your Shifter username is foobarbaz, the username for your WordPress site is also, foobarbaz.

This is the magic part of Shifter Magic Links. For WordPress sites hosted on Shifter, each time the site turns on the password for that user account is rotated. A secure random password is generated for one time use.

By clicking the link from the Shifter Dashboard, the password is applied using a tokenized link for one time use. This provides a direct link to log into your WordPress site.

Are you working with a trusted friend or client and need to share access to your WordPress site? From within your WordPress site you can generate Shifter Magic Links to share temporary access to WordPress Dashboard without needing to creating a username or password. The URLs you create and share are tokenized and expire after they are used.

Need to access WordPress as a different user?

Using plugins such as User Switching, you can access your site using the Shifter Magic Link and switch to any user account you need after you are logged in.

Passwordless Login

In the past we've referred to Shifter Magic Links as our passwordless login feature. The feature is the same but the name has changed as we developer and improve it overtime with your feedback! Thanks for that 👍🏼

User Roles and Permissions for Shifter Teams

For sites using Shifter Teams all members of your team access WordPress using Shifter Magic Links. The roles for each member in your team may limit or provide features based on the role and member permission level.

Troubleshooting

Still seeing a WordPress login page

The most common reason for this is Shifter has not generated the magic link yet. Once WordPress powers up the link is generated. Retrying/clicking the WordPress link again from the Shifter Dashboard should resolve this.

If you follow the link from the Shifter Dashboard for logging into WordPress and you're not automatically logged in, the most common cause is that Shifter has not generate the magic link yet.

Still seeing a WordPress login page after retrying

The most common reason for repeated login attempts is due to a custom PHP function and theme or plugin error. Resolving this type of error may be unique to your site and more troubleshooting is likely required.

Using Shifter Safe Mode

If this occurs, the first step we recommend is trying Shifter Safe Mode. This is a feature available from the Shifter Dashboard designed to allow users access their WordPress site while disabling custom themes and plugins. This removes any room for error providing a clean slate for testing your login and accessing your site.

Contact support

If the recommended solutions are not working, let us know. We are happy to help troubleshoot with you. Reach out to our team while logged into Shifter Dashboard and provide us with your Site ID.

Logging into WordPress made easy

You’ll never forget your WordPress password on Shifter because you’ll never have to. Shifter securely logs in users to WordPress using a tokenized magic links that rotate and expire once they’re used.

Easy and Secure Handoff

Shifter Magic Links are randomized at startup and expire once they’re used so you can share access with your team and support. This login system is a one-of-a-kind solution for WordPress hosting.

Secure Collaboration

Using Shifter Magic Links, share access using our copy link feature from the WordPress Dashboard. Copy, send, and share links to collaborators who need one-time access to your WordPress site security without creating a user account in your site.

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