Title: Autologin Links
Author: WPAutoLogin
Published: <strong>January 25, 2012</strong>
Last modified: February 24, 2021

---

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This plugin **hasn’t been tested with the latest 3 major releases of WordPress**.
It may no longer be maintained or supported and may have compatibility issues when
used with more recent versions of WordPress.

![](https://s.w.org/plugins/geopattern-icon/autologin-links.svg)

# Autologin Links

 By [WPAutoLogin](https://profiles.wordpress.org/wpautologin/)

[Download](https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/autologin-links.zip)

 * [Details](https://sna.wordpress.org/plugins/autologin-links/#description)
 * [Reviews](https://sna.wordpress.org/plugins/autologin-links/#reviews)
 *  [Installation](https://sna.wordpress.org/plugins/autologin-links/#installation)
 * [Development](https://sna.wordpress.org/plugins/autologin-links/#developers)

 [Support](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/autologin-links/)

## Description

This plugin allows admininstators to generate autologin links for their
 WordPress
website, logging in visitors under a certain user name. Administrators can edit (
generate and delete) autologin links for users, users can only view their autologin
links. Note that **This plugin bypasses the standard authentication method of wordpress
via login and password and should only be used if you understand the security issues
mentioned below and on the [plugin website](http://www.craftware.nl/wordpress-autologin/).

**Usage**

Once this plugin is activated, administrators can generate autologin links on
 the
edit profile administration pages for different users. Users can view their autlogin
links on their profile pages. Autologin links are of the form:

http://yourwebsite/[subdirectory/]?autologin_code=ABC123

For more convenience it is possible since version 1.05 to generate login links
 
directly using the wordpress, site-preview functionality. When viewing the page 
while being logged in as an administrator, the top-bar will show an extra item “
Auto-login link”. When pointing at the menu item, a dropdown list will list all 
users for whom autologin links were generated on their profile pages. When clicking
on one of the users, a popup will open showing the link that will automatically 
login a visitor as the selected user and bring him to the current page.

**Security issues**

Since autologin links are meant to be an OPEN way to login to
 your website and 
can be viewed by users on their profile, it might be considered an INSECURE plugin
for WordPress. I did my best to make it as secure as possible to fit my own needs,
but this lead to some design choices which might not sit well with all administrators:

**Autologin codes are saved as plain text.** This means that anyone who can
 execute
queries on the WordPress database (plugins, administrators, system administrators)
can obtain the autologin code for a certain user. I planned an extension of this
plugin where login codes are hashed. However, this again has the disadvantage that
noone can redisplay a once generated login link.

This is the most severe problem. For a full self-assesment of possible security

issues regarding this problem, please visit the [plugin website](http://www.craftware.nl/wordpress-autologin/).

## Screenshots

 * [[
 * The profile element, allowing administrators to create autologin links for users
   on their profile page. Codes are generated automatically for sercurity reasons.
 * [[
 * The administrator UI allowing administrators to generate autologin links that
   redirect visitors to specific pages of a website. The screenshot shows the menu
   together with the popup window that allows copying of the redirect link.

## Installation

 1. Download autologin.zip
 2. Extract the contents of autologin.zip into /wp-contents/plugins
 3. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress

## FAQ

 * How to contribute?

I moved the development of the plugin
 [to GitHub](https://github.com/MrApplejuice/wp-autologin-links).
Please open issues or pull requests over there!

## Reviews

![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/02a76d95b36cbc866cf2652b1a0739943346028e0564ba8735ed59744c41cfe7?
s=60&d=retro&r=g)

### 󠀁[Nice.](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/nice-4160/)󠁿

 [con](https://profiles.wordpress.org/conschneider/) November 21, 2021

Plugin authors that create free plugins love people complaining and giving a 1-star
rating instead of creating a support thread. Fact.

![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/a39c88f45e860606c79031536a73447e6d3df766c5554d68763b91cb3fb7eaf8?
s=60&d=retro&r=g)

### 󠀁[?](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/14128702/)󠁿

 [ofihsdfoi](https://profiles.wordpress.org/ofihsdfoi/) March 3, 2021

Cam here just to say the auto login link is gone and when I click auto login links
I cannot find a link just a useless page. It would be smart to add an option to 
copy and paste the link.

![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/492a1737f070ee15acad57e313777886f56d18963aad78e2f585937109e2eaf4?
s=60&d=retro&r=g)

### 󠀁[Great and works!](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/great-and-works-2/)󠁿

 [onehare](https://profiles.wordpress.org/onehare/) January 14, 2021

I use it on a staging site when dealing with freelancers. It works every time and
make it pain free. Thanks for taking the time out to dev this plugin. love you.

![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/0f8748687508fc1b645a6f8d4fb5d03a404bb89abba185d3ce219ad55e7a81f0?
s=60&d=retro&r=g)

### 󠀁[Great! just works!](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/great-just-works-4/)󠁿

 [palansher](https://profiles.wordpress.org/palansher/) September 7, 2020

Thank you, author!

![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/0d572eee6e6b2349d4adfca4568df6268ef30e90f77121f6f443b5c57020346e?
s=60&d=retro&r=g)

### 󠀁[One of a kind](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/one-of-a-kind-28/)󠁿

 [Nickolay Petrov](https://profiles.wordpress.org/nickolay-petrov/) June 14, 2020

There are no other similar solutions except this plugin.

![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/a68658267db62f3e8345174ed4f150a7f47023e5a4a8b1daf19273473d5d5683?
s=60&d=retro&r=g)

### 󠀁[works](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/works-1723/)󠁿

 [alinoa](https://profiles.wordpress.org/alinoa/) May 20, 2020

Great and works!

 [ Read all 15 reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/autologin-links/reviews/)

## Contributors & Developers

“Autologin Links” is open source software. The following people have contributed
to this plugin.

Contributors

 *   [ WPAutoLogin ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/wpautologin/)

[Translate “Autologin Links” into your language.](https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/autologin-links)

### Interested in development?

[Browse the code](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/autologin-links/), 
check out the [SVN repository](https://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/autologin-links/),
or subscribe to the [development log](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/autologin-links/)
by [RSS](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/autologin-links/?limit=100&mode=stop_on_copy&format=rss).

## Changelog

#### 1.12.0

 * Feature: Add admin menu under Settings -> Autlogin Links that allows to:
 * Feature: Disable the “generate autologin-link” adminbar menu for good.
 * Feature: Set the details of the new loging-lockout feature.
 * Feature: (Security) Add limited number of login retries from a single remote
   
   address. Remote IP addresses are blacklisted for certain amount of time after
   too many login failures. Can be disabled from the new menu.
 * Fixed: Deleting autologin links was impossible after a recent wordpress update.

#### 1.11.3

 * Fixed: When using the plugin on big websites, the plugin was obtaining a list
   of
    all users for the adminbar leading to OOM issues.
 * Update language files and add Makefile generator to automate building all
    translation
   files.

#### 1.11.2

 * Add support for X_FORWARDED_PREFIX to allow serving wordpress installations
    
   using a proxy.
 * Merged PR: Add custom filter for generating example urls called
    ‘pkg_autologin_links_sample_url_prefix’.
   Thanks to https://github.com/mircobabini

#### 1.11.1

 * Fix issue for double include of fuse_url_with_site_url

#### 1.11.0

 * Add limit to the number of autologin-links shown in the admin
    menu (GitHub issue#
   11)
 * Add new constant PKG_AUTOLOGIN_VERSION allowing to check the
    autologin link 
   version in-code
 * Fix: spaced getting stripped from extra query parameters when
    adding a autologin
   link.

#### 1.10.1

 * Fixed readme
 * Added more testing platform to the intergation tests
 * Small fix for old PHP version 5.5
 * Add even more cache-prevention code
 * Add JavaScript linter to debug JavaScript related issues earlier
 * Fixed JavaScript bugs

#### 1.10.0

 * Switched to Semver versioning scheme.
 * Fixed accidental global namespace pollution
 * Attempted fixing serving of seemingly cached websites when visting an autologin
   
   link by sending no-cache headers when visiting a autologin link website.
 * Autologin-links are now generated on the server via AJAX

#### 1.09

 * Fixed vulnerability where autologin-links were verified with a case insensitive
   
   comparison.

#### 1.08

 * Added integration test suite
 * Fix popup dialog for generating links with modern styles
 * Implemented concatenation fix “.” by Hannes Etzelstorfer
    - See: https://wordpress.org/support/topic/php-7-7-1-compatibility/
 * Reorganized svn branches to make development and deployment easier
 * Moved code development repository to GitHub:
    - https://github.com/MrApplejuice/wp-autologin-links

#### 1.07

 * Fixed HTTP/HTTPS protocol redirection. Special thanks at user @quiquoqua for 
   noting.
 * Updated website details.

#### 1.06

 * Fixed long standing bug, not allowing one to update their profile page when
    
   an autologin link was set for the user.

#### 1.05

 * New UI for administrators to generate autologin links for arbitrary pages
 * Added screenshots
 * Updated i10n files, however…
 * TODO: …i10n seems to be broken at the moment (.mo file is ignored)

#### 1.04

 * Minor update of a line checking on invalid userid
 * Major review checking if the code still is working with the newest version of
   
   Wordpress which is should. I cannot find any vulnerabilities that are related
   to this plugin except for the ones mentioned in the module description.

#### 1.03

 * Quick-fix was too quick, more inline directory strings changes were necessary

#### 1.02

 * Fixed directory name to match conventions on wordpress.org

#### 1.01

 * First published version

## Meta

 *  Version **1.12.0**
 *  Last updated **5 years ago**
 *  Active installations **8,000+**
 *  WordPress version ** 4.9.8 or higher **
 *  Tested up to **5.6.17**
 *  Language
 * [English (US)](https://wordpress.org/plugins/autologin-links/)
 * Tags
 * [auto](https://sna.wordpress.org/plugins/tags/auto/)[automatic](https://sna.wordpress.org/plugins/tags/automatic/)
   [link](https://sna.wordpress.org/plugins/tags/link/)[links](https://sna.wordpress.org/plugins/tags/links/)
   [login](https://sna.wordpress.org/plugins/tags/login/)
 *  [Advanced View](https://sna.wordpress.org/plugins/autologin-links/advanced/)

## Ratings

 4.7 out of 5 stars.

 *  [  14 5-star reviews     ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/autologin-links/reviews/?filter=5)
 *  [  0 4-star reviews     ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/autologin-links/reviews/?filter=4)
 *  [  0 3-star reviews     ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/autologin-links/reviews/?filter=3)
 *  [  0 2-star reviews     ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/autologin-links/reviews/?filter=2)
 *  [  1 1-star review     ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/autologin-links/reviews/?filter=1)

[Your review](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/autologin-links/reviews/#new-post)

[See all reviews](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/autologin-links/reviews/)

## Contributors

 *   [ WPAutoLogin ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/wpautologin/)

## Support

Got something to say? Need help?

 [View support forum](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/autologin-links/)