A forgotten password, a security plugin that blocked your own IP by mistake, a plugin bug that turns the admin screen white — the causes vary, but the result is the same: you can’t log in to wp-admin.
Note: WP-CLI is a command-line tool for managing WordPress, invoked as wp. It operates directly on the server, without going through a browser.
This is exactly the situation where WP-CLI is useful. It works here because it never touches wp-login.php — it reads and writes the WordPress database and filesystem directly, so a broken login screen doesn’t affect it at all.
Why WP-CLI keeps working when wp-admin doesn't
A normal login follows the path: browser → wp-login.php → authentication → wp-admin. If anything along that path is broken — a plugin throwing a fatal error during authentication, a security plugin blocking your IP, a fatal error in the admin theme — the login itself can’t complete.
