JHL Auto Login

Disclaimers/Warnings

This can be super insecure and shouldn't be used unless you have a really good reason to

Please don't use the first section where you just pick a name to log in as unless you are locally developing something

This was a quick POC, I don't think I'm even using nonces... I might update this eventually as it's turned out to be useful for a few people

Instructions

Download the zip and install it via the WordPress admin, or unzip/clone to the plugins folder, in a folder named jhl-auto-login

Go to the plugins page and activate it

Go to the Settings menu, and then JHL Auto Login

Enable the plugin by selecting the Yes radio button

You can either choose a user to directly log in as (this is for anyone visiting the site, so PLEASE don't do that), or you can set a parameter to tie to a user meta key, and it will find that and log that user in

Use Case

You generate an email to someone and want them to click on a link and have it automatically log them in, so they never have to deal with a username and password

Go to the JHL Auto Login settings

In the User Meta Key field, enter invite_hash

In the Query String Parameter field, enter invite or whatever you want to use as the key in the query string

Go to the Users menu

Edit a user

Scroll to the bottom

Where it says Invite Hash, either enter a value, or click on the Generate Hash button to make a random string.

That hash is what you will use to log the user in.

So let's say the hash is foo-bar-baz.

Assuming we used invite for the Query String Parameter, the url to log that user in would be example.com?invite=foo-bar-baz