The problem

It happened to a client of mine just recently – they tried to change something in the theme options, but they couldn’t, as reaching out to http://their-site.com/wp-admin/admin.php?page=options.php produced

“Sorry, you are not allowed to access this page.”

message. The theme is News Cherry by Bdaia, found on ThemeForest.

The solution

Turns out the theme is using the native WordPress file editor, which is used for editing themes and plugins through  the admin panel. So once we’ve disabled this through iThemes Security -> WordPress Tweaks, it stopped working for accessing the theme options. If iThemes Security is not present or the option there is disabled, it would be a good idea to check your wp-config.php file for

and set it to false. It’s a good setting to be enabled, so News Cherry is to be blamed for forcing you to lower your guard.