How to Reset your WordPress Password via phpMyAdmin

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By Vincent Wondra

July 1, 2013

Every so often I encounter a website where the user has not only forgotten their password, but no longer has access to the email account it was set under.  Learning how to reset your WordPress password from phpMyAdmin is essential for reasons like this reason if your site is hacked, or something else

Every WordPress blog uses a MySQL Database which can be accessed through your phpMyAdmin even if you are not using cPanel hosting. Follow the following steps to reset your WordPress password:

Step 1 – Identify the Name of your Database

Find the name of your database.  If you don’t know what it is, the best place to look is your wp-config.php file which is located in your root WordPress Directory. In there you will find the name of your database.

Step 2 – Locating Database and Editing the Fields

In your cPanel or other admin panel, you will need to access your MySQL database and then browse it via phpMyAdmin.

phpMyAdmin in cPanel

Once you are in phpMyAdmin, you will need to select the correct database on the left hand side. Look for the name that you found in your wp-config.php and click on that. You will see a list of tables with a prefix wp_ for the most part.

If you changed your prefix during installation, then you would be looking for that specific prefix “for ex: wp673_”.

You will look for the table wp_users, click on it and then click on the Browse Tab.

phpMyAdmin Browse

Click on the Pencil (Edit) Icon to reset your Password.

Edit account in PHPmyAdmin

 

 

Now you will see a field that looks like this:

Edit and reset a password in PHPmyAdmin

Edit the user_pass field value. There are a lot of random characters in the password field. Due to security reasons, WordPress stores the passwords as MD5 Hash rather than Plain text.   You would need to use one of the MD5 generators online to generate your password.  I recommend MD 5 Hash Generator

Simply type your password in that tool and generate MD5 results. Copy and paste the code you get from the converter into your phpMyAdmin field and click Go to save changes.

You have now successfully changed your WordPress Password from phpMyAdmin.

I'm the Founder & President of The BBS Agency & Prebuilt Sites. I have been building websites since the mid 90's. I fell in love with WordPress many years ago and today help companies leverage it's power. I'd love to help you next!