Hi Chris,
Sadly, I believe that you will have to uninstall buddypress in order to access your dashboard to correct the problem. If you can locate the setting in the buddypress files then you can adjust it there and upload that via ftp or your cpanel file manager, but uninstalling and re-installing will be much faster. (Assuming that any major changes you have made have been via a child theme.)
Essentially you told the site that everyone that goes to the login page needs to activate their account therefore no one can login because no one is activated, that is the best way I can think to explain it.
The only time new users will be asked for an activation key is if they attempt to activate their without using the link from their email before logging in.
For example: You register a new account and then go to the activation page before checking your email, here you will be asked to provide the activation key. If you attempt to login before activating you should get a message “ERROR: Your account has not been activated. Check your email for the activation link.”
However, if you register a new account and then go to the email you provided you will have received an email to activate your account. Once you click the link in this email you will be able to login to the account (the email link contains the activation key). This system is to ensure that the user has registered with a valid email that they have access to.
Hope this helps,
Cassey
Before re-installing WordPress, you should crack open phpmyadmin, go to wp_options, and clear out your plugins field. this will disable buddypress, and should re-open your site. then you can fix what you did 🙂
Cassey and Matt,
thanks so much for your help! I was able to deactivate the plugin using phpmyadmin, which meant I didn’t lose all the work I’d put into setting up the buddy press pages. All is now good and I won’t mess with the Activate setting again.
This link helped me to disable plugins using phpmyadmin:
Deactivating WordPress Plugins using PHPMyAdmin
Thanks again,
Chris
You’re welcome, thanks for sharing that link and I’m glad you got it sorted 🙂