Best Way to Enable Two Step Authentication

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I’m looking for a bit of guidance on setting up a two step authentication system in WordPress. I’ve looked at a few of the main plugins and they seem to fall in to two camps:

  • Add an extra field to the login form
  • Add another authentication cookie in addition to the standard WP cookie

I don’t really like the UI of an extra login field, and I don’t feel knowledgeable enough to setup a cookie based authentication system that is secure enough to be worth it. Is there third option I’m missing?

Note: I did see this similar post, but that consisted mainly of plugin recommendations, and I would like to write something myself if possible.

Update: Since my site will only have a handful of privileged users, I decided to add a query string argument that, when present, will cause the extra login field to be shown. This way, normal users don’t ever see the extra field, and I don’t have to worry about managing an extra authentication cookie.

2 Answers
2

Trust me, don’t DIY this. Cryptography is not for the faint of heart.

Use the Google Authenticator plugin. It’s awesome.

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