How to change WordPress user password from phpMyAdmin

How can I reset WordPress user password from PhpMyAdmin? There are many options and ways to change the WordPress admin password. Today we will explore how to change WordPress user password from phpMyAdmin.

We all know that you can reset any WordPress user password using WP Dashboard, however sometimes you don’t have access to the email associated to the account, but you do have direct access to the database using phpmyadmin.

Reset / change WordPress user password from phpMyAdmin

As one of the most popular CMS of the world, and powering around 25% of all internet websites, WordPress is the common target of attacks and security vulnerabilities.

When you don’t update your WordPress core or plugins, you can get easily hacked, and sometimes you will lose access to the wp-admin dashboard. You can also lost your email login password, and you can not make a simple password reset from WP dashboard.

That’s why today we will see how to reset the wp-admin password from PHPMyAdmin tool.

Reset the wp-admin password using PHPMyAdmin

Login to your phpmyadmin panel

If you use cPanel, you can go to cPanel, Databases and then click on ‘PHPMyAdmin’ option

Choose your WordPress database

You can easily find what is your wordpress database by editing wp-config.php file located in the root directory of your WordPress installation. This is a sample wp-config.php file, where you can see the database details:

/** The WordPress Database Name */
define('DB_NAME', 'nixcp_wordp1');

/** MySQL database username */
define('DB_USER', 'nixcp_wordp1');

/** MySQL database password */
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'database_password');

/** MySQL hostname */
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');

In this example, the database name is:

define('DB_NAME', 'nixcp_wordp1');

Of course, in your case the database name will be different.

Now that you know the database name, move to PHPMyAdmin again, and search in the left sidebar, you will see all your databases, included the WordPress one.

Select and click on the database name. After that you will see a large list of tables that starts with “wp_” prefix (unless you previously changed the wordpress database table prefix, in that case the prefix can be anything else)

Identify your wp_users table

Search for the wp_users table, click on the database table. This wil list all wordpress users.

Click on the Edit icon of the user you want to reset the password for.

 

Edit the user_pass field to reset – change the wordpress user password.

By default WordPress stores password in MD5 encrypted form to increase information security, you will not be able to store a plain text password. You will need to select MD5 from the drop-down option at the function field.

Inside the value field, enter your password in plain text format.

Doing this will convert your plain text passphrase to MD5 encryption.

Save the changes.

That’s all, now you know how to change WordPress user password from phpMyAdmin, this technique can be applied to any wordpress username, including the ‘admin’ user.

If you are not able to reset the wp-admin password by yourself, ask your web hosting provider, they may be helpful in the process of recovering your wordpress admin password.

References:

About the Author: Santiago Borges

Experienced Sr. Linux SysAdmin and Web Technologist, passionate about building tools, automating processes, fixing server issues, troubleshooting, securing and optimizing high traffic websites.

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