Do you want to change WordPress password?
Changing WordPress password regularly is a responsible thing to do and helps in keeping WordPress secure.
Also, sometimes you forget your password (which is a reasonable thing) or need to change it because you forgot your account logged in to someone else’s computer.
Whatever the reason, you can quickly and easily change the WordPress password.
Basic WordPress password precautions
Use Strong Password:
You should always have a strong password for all of your accounts. It is the easiest way to defend the website.
Using a weak password is tempting, but you can use any password manager to create a strong password for you and save it.
Never share the password:
Create a different account for each user. Do not let multiple users use the same profile.
Sharing your password with a developer or marketer might look easy, but it could harm you in the long term as you will gradually start doing it regularly.
Avoid public computers:
Always use your laptop when accessing your accounts. Using a public computer or someone else’s laptop could be harmful.
It is very easy to steal a password via keyboard jacking.
Remove inactive accounts:
Keep checking the user list on the profile, and delete the account that is not active now—for example, developer’s profiles or freelance editor accounts.
Changing Your WordPress Password vs. Resetting It
There is a difference between resetting your password and changing it.
Changing a password means you know the password and changing it. It could be due to some security reason, or you have a habit of changing WordPress passwords.
Resetting the password means you have forgotten the password and now want to set it up again from fresh. For that, you will need a reset link sent to your registered email address.
How to change WordPress password?
- Change your Password from Dashboard
- Reset your WordPress Password
- Change the WordPress Password from Database
Change your Password from Dashboard
The easiest way to change the WordPress password is from the user profile.
Log in to your WordPress website using your login URL. The login URL is http://website.com/wp-admin by default, and if you have not changed the login URL, yours will be the same.
Once log in, go to your profile from WordPress from the sidebar.
Scroll down on the profile page, and you will find a new password option under Account Management.
Click on ‘Set New password,’ and WordPress will create a strong password for your profile.
Copy it somewhere safe if you are going with the suggested password. Else, you can make a strong yet memorable password.
Once done, you can click on the Update button to update the profile with a new password.
You will get a notification in the WordPress dashboard and an email to the registered email address.
If you wish to log out your profile from everywhere else, you can do so by clicking on Log Out Everywhere Else.
Reset Your WordPress Password
What if you forgot your password and not able to access the WordPress admin dashboard?
You can quickly recover your WordPress password.
Go to your login page (that is usually – website.com/wp-admin) and click on the ‘Lost your Password?’ below the login box.
On the next page, enter the username or email address registered to the profile.
Check your email to find the reset password link. Sometimes, the mail may end up in the WordPress spam folder, so please check the spam folder if you don’t get the email.
Change the WordPress Password from Database
Sometimes, WordPress fails to password reset email to the registered email address. Or what if, for some reason, you are not able to access the email address.
Don’t panic. You can still change the WordPress password from the database. But, first, you have to open phpMyAdmin.
phpMyAdmin is the tool that handles the MySQL database for WordPress. All the popular WordPress hosting providers have phpMyAdmin, though they may have different ways to access it.
If you don’t know how to access phpMyAdmin, you can ask your hosting support. However, you can easily open phpMyAdmin from the cPanel.
Log in to cPanel and find the phpMyAdmin from the databases tab.
As you open the phpMyAdmin, you may find the list of all the databases. Most of the website owners have only one database, but sometimes there might be few.
You have to look for the database of your WordPress website.
The next screen will display the tables of that WordPress database. Locate the wp-user table and click on it to see the entry.
You can see all the user profiles under the wp-user table.
Click on edit near your user account to open a form with all the user information.
Here, you have to change the value of user_pass and fill it with the new password. WordPress passwords are in MD5 format, so you have to select the MD5 from the drop-down list.
That’s it.
You have successfully changed the WordPress password from the phpMyAdmin.
Also Read
- 8 Types of Image Files and When to use Them
- Best Online Grammar Checker Tools for WordPress
- WordPress Breadcrumbs? How to enable them
Wrap Up
It would be best if you made it a habit to change your WordPress password monthly.
Also, make sure all the other users are changing their passwords every month. You can use the Password Expiration plugin to enforce that.
To add a security layer, you can enable securtiy questions at login page.
After reading this quick tutorial, you know how to change passwords in WordPress. If you encounter any error, please leave it in comment box.
