Can anyone guide me in the right direction on how to loosen or disable the strong password policy? Would like to do it without the use of a plugin. I'm running a non-public site and don't need strong security.

Can anyone guide me in the right direction on how to loosen or disable the strong password policy? Would like to do it without the use of a plugin. I'm running a non-public site and don't need strong security.

• password

• 1 There is no "strong password policy" in wordpress – Mark Kaplun Commented Jan 30, 2016 at 14:41
• 4 Well, you cannot make a simple password, it will only accept very strong passwords, when you create an account as a user. Maybe "policy" is not the right word. make.wordpress/core/2015/07/28/passwords-strong-by-default – MrCalvin Commented Jan 30, 2016 at 22:01
• 1 It's not when creating the admin account or creating user-account in the backend. It's when a user creates his own account in the frontend. In my case using the e-commerce plugin WooCoomerce. But as far I can read this strong password policy is a WP core feature, not delivered by the plugin. But I find it VERY restrictive and I want to disable it or loosen it. I've added a screen-dump to my question. – MrCalvin Commented Jan 31, 2016 at 23:25
• 1 it's a WP core service. They implemented the library called "zxcvbn", made by Dropbox in 2012. – MrCalvin Commented Feb 2, 2016 at 8:31
• 3 I already did....but I have more faith in wordpress.stackexchange ;-) – MrCalvin Commented Feb 3, 2016 at 9:30

4 Answers 4

This will do it :-)

add_action( 'wp_print_scripts', 'DisableStrongPW', 100 );

function DisableStrongPW() {
    if ( wp_script_is( 'wc-password-strength-meter', 'enqueued' ) ) {
        wp_dequeue_script( 'wc-password-strength-meter' );
    }
}

I found the solution here.

Currently it's not possible to change the strength requirements of the password. You can only deactivate it the functionality completely by dequeueing the password script:

add_action( 'wp_print_scripts', 'DisableStrongPW', 100 );

function DisableStrongPW() {
    if ( wp_script_is( 'user-profile', 'enqueued' ) ) {
        wp_dequeue_script( 'user-profile' );
    }
}

For changing the minimum strength of the password I can recommend this plugin which builds on the same library and integrates nicely into woocommerce: https://wordpress/plugins/wc-password-strength-settings/

Just to update this answer:

add_action( 'wp_print_scripts', 'DisableStrongPW', 100 );

function DisableStrongPW() {
    if ( wp_script_is( 'user-profile', 'enqueued' ) ) {
        wp_dequeue_script( 'user-profile' );
    }
}

It can also be set in the wp_generate_password function. Just in case you use it for your own code. See: https://codex.wordpress/Function_Reference/wp_generate_password