How to Change Your Password in WordPress
November 19. 2019
Have you forgotten your WordPress password? Maybe you feel like it’s necessary to change WordPress password in order to protect your website from security breaches? Luckily, our WordPress team of experts knows more than one way that will help you achieve just that. We make the process of WordPress reset password easy, so you won’t have to waste your precious time scanning the website, searching for the settings that will allow you to change your password. After reading this article, the process will be as easy as ABC.
The quickest way to change WordPress password
When we say quick, we really mean it! This process can be done in under two minutes. All you need is knowing which areas of your website you need to access. Log in to WordPress and go to Users > Your Profile from the WordPress menu. By scrolling down to the Account Management section, you will be able to see a New Password option. All you have to do now is click on the Generate Password section, where you will have two choices:
- Continue with the strong password WordPress will automatically generate for you or
- Generate a password of your own.
In order to password protect WordPress site, any WordPress site, you will need to use a strong password. So if you don’t feel like sticking with WordPress’ suggestion, make sure you come up with a password that will be hard to breach. Once done, click the ‘Update Profile’ button and you will have successfully changed your password. If you are just learning how to use WordPress, this is by far the easiest option for you. But it’s not the only one you have.
Locked out of your website? Here’s another easy WordPress reset password option!
Changing your WordPress password when you can access your dashboard is easy. But what happens when you get locked out of your website? As it turns out, nothing that extreme! All you have to do is go to your login page and spot the ‘Lost your password?’ link. After clicking on it, you will be directed to the WordPress password protect page and you will be able to reset the password on your account.
However, to reset the password, you will first need to provide your e-mail address or username. The password reset link will be sent to the e-mail address that is associated with your username and just like that, your password will be changed. Note that this approach will work for both WordPress.com and WordPress.org, so you don’t have to worry about having one or the other.
You can also change WordPress password from the database
The method discussed above is a fairly easy one – we can all agree with that much. But what happens if, for some reason or another, you don’t have access to the e-mail address that’s associated with your account? Then you won’t have any other option but to change WordPress password straight from the database.
Your first step should be to log in to your new WordPress hosting account and finding the control panel. By clicking on the phpMyAdmin option under the Databases section, you will have to select the database that is associated with your WordPress site. Once you do that, you will be able to see a list of tables in the database, and you will be looking for one specific table – wp_users. Once you find it, feel free to click on the Browse link next to it.
Now, this option will show you an overview of all the users on your site. What you are supposed to do is find your user account and click on the edit link next to it. This will open a form with all of the important information fields and what you will need to do is delete the value you see in the usser_pass field. Why are you deleting this value, you ask? Because now you get to replace it with the new password. Select the MD5 option from the drop-down menu and click on the Go button. If you were wondering how to change WordPress password like a pro, you now have your answer.
Forcing a reset due to security breaches
WordPress maintenance and security monitoring is a 24/7 job. Every person who owns a website has been at risk for a security breach of some sort at least once. And that’s the bare minimum we are talking about. Once your website gets hacked, you have no other option but to force a password change. Even though this situation seems very threatening and troublesome, the solution to the password change is a fairly simple one. All you have to do is install and activate an Expire Passwords plugin.
However, do have in mind that the Expire Passwords plugin has not been tested with the latest three releases of WordPress. So you might run into some compatibility issues with other plugins. Luckily, this isn’t your only option. For really urgent situations, you can use the Emergency Password Reset plugin. Although great hope remains that you will never be in a position where you will have to forcefully and urgently learn how to change WordPress password on your website.
Final thoughts
Whenever you want to change WordPress password, there’s one thing you really need to keep in mind – the new combination of letters and numbers. You have to go above and beyond to create a strong password. And a strong password is certainly not your DOB or your mother’s maiden name. Come up with a seemingly random combination of letters and numbers and don’t forget to write it down. You don’t want to lock yourself out of your own website, do you?