How Do You Change The Username and Password to a WordPress Blog?

Question:

i need to change the login & password to a wordpress blog. It was hosted in one place then I changed hosting companies. I no longer have the login details. It is a subdomain to a wordpress blog that I can log in to.

Answer:

Changing the WordPress password is easy, but changing the username requires database access. I’ve done this on many blogs after they got hacked and my login credentials got changed. Lesson learned, never use the same username and password on your blogs that you use for your control panel access. The ones that had different credentials were unharmed. Here’s how I do it.

Changing a WordPress Username

1. Find out which database the blog is using by opening the wp-config.php file on your server. Since this is a subdomain, the folder you want to go into to find that file will be in the root of your hosting account. So if you WordPress blog is greenbeans.gardening.com, go into the greenbeans folder in your root and your WordPress installation will be in there. Open wp-config.php and scroll down to around line 35ish and look for the DB_NAME parameter. It will contain your hosting account username followed by _wrdpx, where the “x” at the end of that string is a number. That entire string is the database name.
2. Now go to your web hosting control panel and open MyPHPAdmin.
3. Locate and click on that database in the left-hand column.
4. When the tables display, click on the wp_options table.
5. In the right panel make sure you see your blog’s name where option_name = “blogname” to make sure you selected the right database.
6. Just a few lines below that, take note of the value for the admin_email. You’ll need that in the next step.
7. Back on the left side, click on the wp_users table and find that email address. If you have a lot of users to scroll thru, click on the SQL tab above and search for it using this SQL statement…
   SELECT * FROM `wp_users` WHERE `user_email` = “name@domain.com”
   replacing name@domain.com with the email address. Then click the ‘Go’ button.
   If you typed it right, the database record will display.
8. Click the little Edit (pencil) icon to the left of the record.
9. Now you can change the current username in the value column for the user_login, if you want to change it. If you only wanted to see what it is, well, there it is! You can also change the user_email at this time, too, if you want. DO NOT CHANGE THE VALUE FOR THE user_pass because that is not the password. The value you see is encrypted.
10. When you’re done making the changes, click the ‘Go’ button.

Changing a WordPress Password

1. Now that you know the username, go to the login screen as usual with http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin
2. Click the “Lost your password?” link.
3. Now enter the username or email address and click the ‘Get New Password’ button.
4. You’ll get an email with a password reset link in it. Click the link to reset the password.

That’s it! Bob’s your uncle.

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