Yesterday, when I was cloning a client site with ManageWP, I ran into an issue with an error message, “530 Login authentication failed.”
The error message displayed after I had entered all the FTP account information:
- Username
- Password
as well as the database credentials:
- Host
- Database name
- Database username
- Database password
I did my troubleshooting. Checked and double-checked the FTP username and FTP password, comparing it to what was in cPanel.
I even changed the password.
Twice.
I wasn’t sure what the problem was. Everything seemed like it should work.
Why was I still getting that error?
FTP Accounts in cPanel
After doing some research, I learned that if you have a hosting account with cPanel, the default FTP user account has the “username” as the FTP login name.
But when you create additional FTP accounts, which is what I did, the FTP login name follows the “username@your-domain.com” format.
If you don’t follow that specific format, you’ll get the 530 Login authentication error message.
Which is what happened to me.
Once I updated the FTP user account to include “@your-domain.com”, the login authentication message disappeared and the clone process worked.
Have you ever had authentication or connection issues with FTP accounts on your web hosting? Share your experiences in the comments.
