Reset Your WordPress Admin Password

Reading Time: < 1 minuteWhether its a hacked site or a lost password, you may find that you are locked out of your WordPress Admin control panel. If you’ve forgotten your password or don’t have access to the email address that the “Lost your password?” link sends to, you still have one more option to access it. Through the database! WordPress’ database stores all WordPress username, encrypted passwords, and the user’s email address and thus can be edited through a database client like phpMyAdmin. In this tutorial, we’ll be showing you how to edit the email address and change your user’s password.

Step 1: Enter the Database

If you don’t have your database credentials you can certainly grab them from your wp-config.php file, usually located in /var/www/html. Copy your username and password, you’ll need these to enter phpMyAdmin.


/** MySQL database username */
define('DB_USER', 'yourusername');
/** MySQL database password */
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'userpassword');

Visit https://yourhostname.com/phpmyadmin (or http) and enter your database username and password from your wp-config.php. Click on your database name on the left, in this case, ours is named 929368_kittens.

Note

If you do not find a phpMyAdmin login page when going to the previously mentioned URL, check with your Admin or support team as it may be at a particular URL.

Step 2: Edit your Database

Find the wp_users table and click the Edit link in the same row as the user’s email address. To reset your WordPress password, click on the wp_users table in your database.

To reset your WordPress password, click on the wp_users table in your database.

Step 3: Edit A User’s Email

Update your WordPress email address by selecting the wp_user table, along with the particular user.

Step 4: Change A User’s Password

In the user_pass row set the new password by replacing the previous password with a new one. Choose MD5 from the drop-down box and select Go. Selecting MD5 in your database allows for the WordPress password to be encrypted.

Selecting MD5 in your database allows for the WordPress password to be encrypted.

Try out your new password by going to your WordPress login at http://yourdomain.com/wp-login.php After following the previous steps you'll then be able to login to the WordPress Admin control panel.