wp-login.php — redirect logged in users to custom URL

by

The best way to figure out what’s happening for a problem like this is to go to the source. Literally.

Take a look in wp-login.php and look for an action that fires before any HTML rendering happens. The hook you’re looking for is login_init. Add a callback to it, check if the user is logged in and redirect them if so.

The only other snag here is that wp-login.php also handles logging out. So you need to check the global $action variable to make sure a logout isn’t in progress.

add_action('login_init', 'wpse187831_redir_loggedin');
function wpse187831_redir_loggedin()
{
    global $action;

    if ('logout' === $action || !is_user_logged_in()) {
        return;
    }

    wp_redirect(apply_filters(
        'wpse187831_loggedin_redirect',
        current_user_can('read') ? admin_url() : home_url(),
        wp_get_current_user()
    ), 302);
    exit;
}

There’s a bit of extra stuff there:

  • A call to apply_filters so other plugins can hook in and modify my redirect if they like. This filter gets the redirect itself as well as the current user.
  • There’s a check to see if the current user can actually access the admin area before redirecting them there.

Here’s that little snippet as a plugin.

Leave a Comment