How to Change Your WordPress Password
Your WordPress password gives you access to your site. With a username and password combo, you will be able to access your WP dashboard and make administrative changes and updates. This guide will show you how to change WordPress password.
Passwords are a requirement for virtually everything you do online. Thus, users are expected to memorize or store passwords which include letters, digits, or symbols.
Since passwords are the primary tool for WordPress security, you cannot afford to have an easy-to-crack password. It would make your site vulnerable to attacks. And the site administrator could be impersonated.
However, since your password has to be solid, it is often easy to forget your password and get locked out of your account.
If you find yourself in any of these situations:
- You can’t remember the password to your WordPress site.
- A hacker locked you out of your site.
- You need to change your password to a stronger one to ensure the security and privacy of your site.
Then this article is for you. We’re going to explore different ways to reset your WordPress password. You’ll learn how to change passwords for your site depending on the situation you find yourself.
Content:
Importance of strong WordPress passwords
Having different passwords for every online account can be hard to keep up with. Because of this, a lot of people tend to set passwords that are easy to remember.
Simple passwords like a combination of numbers that make up birth dates, or something as simple as 1234 are often used. However, strong passwords are very important for your WordPress admin panel.
If a malicious user is able to guess your password, they can access your admin panel and modify your site as they please. They may add malware, malicious links to blacklisted sites, and other hacks that would ruin your site.
They can also steal user information which will put your business in a really bad spot. Lost credibility, blacklist by search engines, fraud, and legal issues are just some of the reasons to ensure your site is secure.
Additionally, passwords alone are usually not sufficient. To ensure better WordPress security, you should implement two-factor authorization. Please read our WordPress two factor authentication guide.
Ways to change WordPress passwords
There are various reasons why you may need to reset your password. You may simply want to set a more secure password for your site. Or you lost your password and are locked out of your account.
The solutions below address these situations. The first solution shows you how to change your password when you have access to your admin area. The other three solutions show you what to do when you can’t access your admin area.
Side note: WordPress lets you introduce passwords on your posts and pages thereby restricting access to them. Want to know how? Read our guide on WordPress Password Protect Page.
When logged in through the WordPress admin dashboard
This method is useful for changing the WordPress password of your site while you still have access to it. This can be done with ease from the WordPress dashboard.
First, log in to your WordPress admin dashboard and go to Users>All Users.
On the All Users page, hover on the Administrator’s profile and click Edit.
On the Profile page, scroll to Account Management section. Next, click Generate Password.
WordPress will generate a series of characters, including numbers and symbols as password.
The password that WordPress generates is complex and is difficult to guess. This is why you should use it! To help you remember the password, use password management tools to save your passwords and log in.
Alternatively, you can create your own password.
Simply type in your chosen password into the ‘new password’ field. Make sure you use a strong password.
WordPress recognizes a password as Strong depending on the number and mix of characters in it. The box under the password textbox will turn green with Strong written on it.
Furthermore, you can click to log out of all other devices and stay logged in on the present device to force usage of your new password.
When you’re satisfied with your new password, click Update Profile to save the new changes.
And that is how to change the WordPress password from your dashboard.
Change WordPress password through email when locked out of your site
This method is useful if you lost the password to your WordPress site, and are unable to gain access through the login screen.
If you try to access your WordPress site and you get the error message that the password you entered is incorrect, you can use the ‘lost your password’ link on the login screen to reset your WordPress password.
Click on any of the links as shown below.
Enter your username or the email associated with your WordPress website into the space provided. Click Get New Password.
You’ll receive a prompt to check your email for the confirmation link.
Go to your inbox and click the reset link.
The link redirects to a WordPress login page. WordPress will generate a password for you as seen below.
You may use the password it generates, or enter a new strong password.
When done, click Reset Password.
And that’s it, you have reset your WordPress password.
Reset password via phpMyAdmin on WordPress site’s cPanel
This method to change WordPress password is useful if you did not get the email when you tried the reset option above, and if you have access to cPanel through the WordPress hosting for your site.
To reset your WordPress password via phpMyAdmin, first log in to your cPanel. Your host provider will give you the necessary details like the URL, username, and password for accessing cPanel.
We will be making changes to the site’s database. Therefore, it is important to backup your database.
After logging in to cPanel, under Files section, click Backup.
Scroll to Partial Backups.
Next, under the ‘Download a MySQL Database Backup’ section, click the link under databases.
The database will begin to download as a compressed sql.gz file. It will be saved in Downloads folder in your computer system.
Now that the database is backup is complete, we will proceed to reset the WordPress password for the site.
Still in cPanel, under the Databases section, click phpMyAdmin.
On the new screen, click the database link at the upper left-hand corner. Ensure this is the database containing your WordPress site.
Locate the ‘users table’ on the screen and click on it.
Note that this table usually has a prefix, such as wp_users, or in our case, prt_users.
A list of the site’s admin users will display along with usernames and emails as well. Locate the particular user you wish to change password for. Click Edit.
Locate user_pass on the page.
In the user_pass field, click the dropdown menu beside the varchar(255) under the Function column, and select MD5.
In the same field, under the Null Value column, delete the old password and enter a new one. Then, click Go.
You will see a success message. Your password has been updated.
Password Reset using the Emergency Password Reset Script
This is another method you can use to change WordPress password if email reset does not work and if you would not like to directly alter your database. The Emergency Password Reset Script is a PHP script which gives you a dialog to reset your password.
First, copy the Emergency Password Script. Then paste it in a note file and save as emergency.php.
The next thing you need to do is upload the emergency.php file to the root of your WordPress installation by logging to your site’s cPanel, and going to File Manager>Public_html.
After uploading, follow these steps:
- In your browser, enter http://yoursite.com/emergency.php (replace yoursite.com with your domain)
- Enter the WordPress admin username
- Next, type in the new password
- Then click Update options.
Your password will be reset to the new one you entered.
Ensure you delete the emergency.php file from the server when your password reset is complete. Otherwise, anyone can reset your password.
To delete the file, navigate to Public_html ( still on your site’s cPanel). Next, select the emergency.php file and click Delete.
Click Confirm to complete the deletion.
Conclusion
In this article, we have reviewed four different ways to change your WordPress password.
Changing your password through email is simple and easy. If you lose access to your email or do not receive the reset email, you may have to resort to the use of PhpMyAdmin in cPanel.
The emergency reset script is easy to use but is a last resort.
Whichever method you use, ensure you set a secure password. Furthermore, you can enhance your site security with other steps. Please read our WordPress security guide for more information.
