When you have too many websites like me, sometimes you have to reset your WordPress admin password. Yes this happens to me all of the time.
Normal people can simply click on the “forgot password’ link, but I often do not even know the email address I have actually used. I know this sounds crazy, but I am sure you will have your own reasons for needing to read this tutorial.
How to Reset your WordPress Admin Password?
Yes you can reset your WordPress admin password but you will need a few things first.
What do you need to change your WordPress admin password?
- To reset your WordPress admin password you will need access to your server. This is the website hosting where your website is located. For example, I use Hostgator for my website hosting and would go to my Cpanel to change this password.
- If you are hosting more than one website in the same location you will need to know the database name that particular website you want to log into.
- You will need to have access to the Internet to login to your server and to create a new MD5 encryption.
- You will need to open a notepad so you can copy your new MD5 encryption password, and to note what this code interprets to.
Basically you should have all these things if you are running a website. We all need an Internet connection if we are involved with websites.
How to reset your admin password for WordPress
I have made a detailed video tutorial on how to reset your admin password but I will also list a quick set of instructions.
1. Login to your server Cpanel and look for the databases section. Look for the phpMyAdmin icon.
2. Double-click on this icon to enter. See the screenshot below.
3. Once in phpMyAdmin select the WordPress database from the drop-down menu on the left. If you are not sure which database to choose, scroll down below to find the instructions on how to see which database you are using.
4. Then when you have entered the right database, you need to look for the username. This will be the account that you want to change the password for.
5. You will then need to click on the edit link to actually change the details for this user. See this screenshot below.
6. Now you will see more details and be able to change them. Where it says user_pass, this means we need to change these details.
7. Go to Google and type in MD5 encryption or you can try this MD5 hash website. You will need to generate a new encrypted user password.
8. Once you have generated a new encrypted password, paste it into the user password section.
9. Click on the GO button to submit the query.
The best way to learn how to change your WordPress admin password is to watch the video below.
How To Find Your WordPress Data Base Name?
Lets say you have 20 websites installed on your Hostgator server. This creates a small problem when trying to edit the data base user details as you need to know which data base to enter. You could enter them all until you see something that looks familiar but this is a waste of time. Before going to the phpMyAdmin section in your hosting, you need to go to the root of your domain and look for your wp-config.php file.
1. Login to your cpanel hosting.
2. Scroll down to the files section and look for the file manager icon. Double-click on that icon. See the screenshot below.
3. A file manager directory selection box will appear. You will need to make a few choices here.
- you need to select document root for:
- You need to tick the box that says show hidden files.
- You need to choose which website from the drop down menu.
After all of this you can press the go. See the screenshot below.
4. Now you can look for your wp-config.php file and select it by making it blue.
5. Then right click on the blue selection and choose “view” from the menu.
6. In this file you should see something like ” (‘DB_NAME’, ‘mydb_wrdp30′);
7. That means that mydb_wrdp30 is my database name.
If you have problems resetting the password yourself, ask your website hosting company for help. I’d definitely know that Hostgator would help out in a situation like this as I have always got fantastic help from them, even though the problem had nothing to do with their hosting.