So you're having trouble logging in to a website? This is a very common problem and it's affected all of us at one point or another. Here's a list of things you can try to solve your problem, or at the very least, find exactly where the problem might be.
As well as being a common problem, it's also a very broad problem - there are lots of different elements that have to work properly before you can use a website or do something as straightforward as logging in. Lets start at the basics and go from there.
If you want to skip ahead, here's the index:
Lets get the most obvious problem out of the way - is there anything wrong with your internet connection? If you're having trouble loading the website sometimes or at all then there might be a problem with your internet connection that's preventing you from logging in.
If you've been able to load this article to read, then there's a chance your internet is fine... But generally speaking, a good way to test your internet connection is to load a very popular and stable website, such as the homepage of Google - if Google loads for you then it's a very good sign that your internet connection at least partially works.
If Google doesn't even load, then you've probably got a bigger problem than not being able to log in to a website. (We're working on a guide to help debug internet problems and will post it here soon!)
When you can't log in to a site, the first thing to look at is what the website itself is saying when it tells you that you aren't able to log in. Are there any error messages? Websites want you to be able to log in, so if there's a problem they'll usually give you some kind of error message telling you why you're having trouble logging in and what you might do to fix it.
If you can't log in to a website, look next to the login form for any error messages which will tell you what the problem seems to be - does it say "Incorrect Password"? Does it say "Incorrect or unknown username or email?". Look for these kinds of hints near the login box to see if this is the reason you can't log in.
If the website you are trying to log in to is telling you that you are using the wrong user name, then double check the spelling - you might have accidentally misspelt it - a missing or wrong character in your username is enough to stop you from logging in. Your username will have to be typed exactly right for the website to recognise you.
Make sure you're using the right username for the website you're having trouble with. Some people have multiple social media accounts with different usernames - for example, you might have accidentally tried to log in to your Instagram account with your Twitter user name.
Have you changed your username recently? Some websites let you change your username and if you've changed your username but try to log in with your old username, it won't work.
Some websites and apps ask you to use your email address as your personal identifier instead of a username. Read the website's login form closely and make sure this isn't the case for you - if they are asking you for your email address, be sure to type it in. Some websites even let you log in with your phone number, so be sure to read exactly what they're asking you for.
It's very common for people to use more than one email address - perhaps you have a work email address and a personal email address - if you try to log in to a website with your work email when you actually registered with your personal address or vice versa, it won't work. So double check that you're using the correct email address.
Misspelling the domain name is a common problem too - you might have accidentally typed "john@mgail.com" instead of gmail.com!
If you enter an incorrect password too many times, some websites will temporarily block your account from logging in. This is to help prevent automated password attacks. If this happens, you might just have to wait a bit until you can try again. If you haven't been entering your password lots while trying to log in, then it's possible that someone else is trying to "brute force attack" your account. If that's the case then make sure you have a very strong password - don't use a word that can be found in a dictionary. We're working on a guide to help you use strong passwords; it's coming soon!
Some websites might temporarily or permanently block your account from logging in if you violate their site policies (or if their automated system thinks you have). If this ever happens they usually at least give you a message like "Your account has been banned" or something like that when you try to log in.
If they have an appeals proceedure, you can see if you are able to contest the block or at least find out what they think you did wrong. Some websites won't even tell you what policy they think you violated (as this can lead to people trying to game their system and policies).
If you have been unfairly banned or blocked, hopefully they will give you a warning and let you access your account again.
Probably the most common cause of not being able to log in to a website is using the wrong password. At least websites will be pretty clear about this problem and give you a nice Incorrect password style error message.
Lets explore the reasons why you might be told that you're using the wrong password.
If you have Caps Lock turned on while you're typing your password then your password will be in all upper case, which means it won't match what it actually is and the website won't let you in. Make sure your Caps Lock is turned off (most keyboards have a small light in the key that indicates it's turned on - push it to turn it off) and try your password again.
Hopefully you aren't reusing passwords and have a different password for each site you log in to (it helps you stay secure and minimize the damage if one of your passwords gets stolen/discovered) - but it also might mean you are typing the wrong password in to the site you're having trouble with.
Double check you're typing the right password in - don't forget that if a site is asking you for your email and your password, it's NOT asking you for your email password - you're using your email address to identify yourself and then using the password you set for that website to log in with (...unless you are actually logging in to your webmail check your email!!)
The next thing to ask yourself is have you changed your password recently? Maybe you typed your old password by mistake or your browser or Password Manager extension is auto-filling the old, incorrect password. If you've recently changed it, make sure to type and update your saved password with the new one.
Fortunately, every website that lets you log in should give you the ability to set a new password for your account if you forgot the old one.
If you've double checked your password and you are certain you're typing the correct username/email and correct password into to the correct website and it's still having problems, then you might start to consider the possibility that someone has discovered your password and logged in and changed it!
Please don't jump to any conclusions about this; you might have just gotten completely confused and while you think you've got the right password, you actually don't... or maybe the website is just having some weird, non-obvious problem that's preventing logins from working... But of course, peoples accounts do get broken in to, so it might unfortunately happened to you, but for now, just remain calm and see if you can just set a new password.
The next step is to perform a password reset and see if that gets you back in.
Hopefully a password reset lets you back in, after which, make sure that you've set a strong password (make sure it's long enough, contains uppercase & lowercase characters, some numbers and maybe even some symbols too). (This is also a good chance to make sure that all your passwords on other websites are strong enough too!)
If a password reset doesn't work then there might be a bigger problem with your account - we're working on a detailed guide to help with hacked accounts, but for now you can try contacting the site you're having trouble with and seeing if they can give you some help. Look for their Support Desk or Contact form.
If your password really isn't working and you need to set a new one, then look for a link on the Log In page/screen that says something like "Reset Password", or "Forgotten Password?" or maybe "Get new password". Basically every website that lets you log in will have some kind of prompt like this, somewhere on the page.
Here's a list of links to common password reset pages:
Some other websites such as Google (which covers Gmail, Youtube, Google Docs etc) and Tumblr start by asking you for your username or email before giving you the option to reset your password.
Nearly every website has a slightly different approach to resetting your forgotten password, but essentially they'll send you some kind of email which contains a unique/secret link to click that proves you have access to the email address used - when you click the link you'll be able to set a new password. Some websites will instead give you a "temporary password" which you are then forced to change once you log in with it.
If, after making sure you're using the right username and password, you're still having trouble logging in to a website it's possible that the website itself has a problem. There are a few other things you can try.
It seems obvious, but we're covering all the angles here! If the website is completely down then you'll obviously have trouble logging into it! There's still a few different reasons why a website might not respond, and they're worth investigating.
When a website "isn't working" you might get a few different error messages, each which indicate a different problem.
If you type in the incorrect domain name then depending on your web browser you'll get a different error message, telling you that the website can't be found at all
If you've typed the wrong domain name:
If you get an error like this, then it means you've typed the wrong URL (or maybe clicked a bad link on another website). Try retyping the URL making sure to spell it correctly and hopefully it will load.
If you are getting one of these errors there's a small chance your DNS Settings are incorrect or your ISP has a problem, but that's outside the scope of this guide - we'll write a guide to help with this soon too.
If you've typed the correct URL your web browser will then know how to find and contact the website, however if the server is "down" it means that while the server can be found it's not responding to your requests.
If the site just isn't responding then perhaps the website is overloaded and just too busy to work at the moment, or perhaps they've got a problem with their servers and nothing is working for them right now. There's nothing you can do about this. Hopefully they fix it soon.
If you're trying to access the site from your computer, you could try to access the site from your mobile phone (or vice versa). This might help narrow down where the problem is. If your phone is connected to your Wifi connection, make sure to temporarily disconnect it from the Wifi so that it falls back to using your 4G/Cellular connection instead of using your internet connection which may have a problem.
Running and maintaining websites is a complicated endeavour and sometimes sites need to temporarily go down for upgrades or maintenance - it isn't common on big websites but it does happen. They should at least give you a big notice that says something to the effect of "Down for maintenance - back soon" so that you know why you can't log in. If it's scheduled maintenance, some websites will give you notice a few hours or days beforehand.
Sometimes, things do just break and stop working - we're all human, and the people who make the websites you love are human too - It's possible the site you're trying to log in to is just having some issues. Maybe the site is showing the normal page, but logging in is just broken, or there's some other weird bug at the moment. Hopefully their team of developers and admins are working hard to fix whatever the problem is. If it's a wide-spread outage for a big website it will often make some waves on social media or even the news, so you might hear about it there and be able to confirm the outage.
If the website is having some kind of problem, you might find that only certain parts of the website load for you.
Even a single page on a website usually requires dozens of files to load properly - the images, the display styles (colors, sizes etc) and the JavaScript code all rely on different files downloading to your device. If some or none of those load properly then the site may not work and you may not be able to log in.
It's most noticable when none of the images load at all; or perhaps none of the styles for the website load (the website is just black and white text). Or perhaps some or none of the site's JavaScript is loading (Read our guides about JavaScript) - you would notice this if you try clicking on buttons or elements which normally do something (pop out the login box, zoom an image, load a new page) but nothing happens.
If this is the case, then there's probably nothing you can really do about this - it's most likely a problem with the website itself, perhaps they deployed some new code that's not working quite right or maybe one of their servers are down.
If you've got adblockers or privacy extensions there's a chance they're preventing part of the code/assets for the site from loading - if you're having trouble you could try disabling your addons/extensions temporarily and see if that helps.
So if you can connect to the website and load the login page, you are sure your username/email and password are correct, you're not banned but you're still having trouble connecting there are still a few things you can try.
Cookies are required to be enabled/accepted by your browser on basically every single website that requires you to log in. If you don't have cookies enabled you won't be able to log in to most websites.
We've got some guides to help you enable cookies in lots of different web browsers.
If you're concerned about privacy issues relating to cookies, remember that it's normally considered quite acceptable to accept First-Party cookies and block Third-Party cookies. Our guides have instructions for controlling these two options for your web browser. Many browsers will also give you the option of normally blocking cookies but allowing just a few websites that you choose to set cookies.
A lot of websites are very dependant on JavaScript these days, and they won't work without it enabled. If you're having trouble logging in, it's worth checking that you have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
We've got guides to help you enable JavaScript for your web browser.
If you're concerned about running JavaScript on every single website you visit, many browsers let you whitelist just the sites that really need it and keep it disabled for all the others.
Sometimes for a variety of technical reasons, your browser's cookies and cache for a particular website can just get a bit messed up - clearing your cookies and cache can take you back to a bit of a "blank slate" and let you try again freshly.
To do this, you can try clearing your cache and cookies. If you don't want to completely erase your browsing history, make sure to read the options closely and choose just what you want to remove - normally clearing your cache and cookies should be enough to reset your browser.
It's worth a shot!
Sometimes computers and web browsers get a bit messed up - and just like clearing your cache and cookies - restarting your computer, phone, or tablet can sometimes just freshen it up a bit and fix some kinds of problems.
It's possible that you have an adblocker, privacy extension or some other kind of browser add on that's causing problems. Try temporarily disabling any extensions you have and reloading the login page for the website you're having trouble with.
Having an out of date web browser might still cause log in problems on some websites. To stay safe online you should always be running an up to date web browser, so take a moment to check if your web browser is up to date and if not, follow the instructions to update your web browser.
In this guide, we've tried to step you through all the possible things that can go wrong when logging into a website - hopefully it's helped you find your problem but sometimes it takes the expertise of someone who's used to diagnosing and fixing problems like this.
Start by contacting the site you're having trouble with directly - they should have some kind of Contact form, Help Desk or even Support Forums. When you ask your question, be polite and make sure to tell them as much detail as possible - include what the exact problem is, including any error messages you get when you try to log in, also include a list of the things from this guide that you've tried - clearing cookies, enabling javascript, trying a different internet connection, etc.
Including lots of detail will help them narrow down the problem quicker.
Hopefully, something in this guide helped you find and fix the problem you were having logging in to a website.
Safe browsing!