WordPress Reset your password

In WordPress, there is more than one way to reset your password. (Normally, the easiest way to reset it is through the “Lost your password?” link on the main login page for your blog or website.)
However, there are certain times (especially if your email isn’t working correctly) that you may have to take different steps to reset your password.

Here’s a list of different ways to reset a password. The method that you use depends on the type of access that you still have to your website.

To Change Your Password

To change your password in current versions:

1. In the Administration Screen, menu, go to Users > All Users.
2. Click on your username in the list to edit it.
3. In the Edit User screen, scroll down to the New Password section and click the Generate Password button.
4. If you want to change the automatically generated password, you can overwrite it by typing a new password in the box provided. The strength box will show you how good (strong) your password is.
5. Click the Update User button.

Your new password becomes active immediately.

Through the automatic emailer

If you know your username or the email account in your profile, you can use the “lost password” feature of WordPress.

• Go to your WordPress Login page (something like http://yoursite.com/wordpress/wp-login.php)
• Click on the “Lost your password?” link
• You will be taken to a page to enter some details. Enter your username or the email address on file for that account.
• Wait happily as your new password is emailed to you.
• Once you get your new password, login to your profile page and change this password to something you can remember.

Through MySQL Command Line

1. Get an MD5 hash of your password.
   • Visit md5 Hash Generator, or…
   • Create a key with Python, or…
   • On Unix/Linux:
     1. Create a file called wp.txt, containing nothing but the new password.
     2. tr -d ‘\r\n’ < wp.txt | md5sum | tr -d ‘ -‘
     3. rm wp.txt
   • On Mac OS X:
     1. Create a file called wp.txt, containing nothing but the new password. Then enter either of the lines below
     2. md5 -q ./wp.txt; rm ./wp.txt (If you want the MD5 hash printed out.)
     3. md5 -q ./wp.txt | pbcopy; rm ./wp.txt (If you want the MD5 hash copied to the clipboard.)
2. “mysql -u root -p” (log in to MySQL)
3. enter your mysql password
4. “use (name-of-database)” (select WordPress database)
5. “show tables;” (you’re looking for a table name with “users” at the end)
6. “SELECT ID, user_login, user_pass FROM (name-of-table-you-found);” (this gives you an idea of what’s going on inside)
7. “UPDATE (name-of-table-you-found) SET user_pass=”(MD5-string-you-made)” WHERE ID = (id#-of-account-you-are-reseting-password-for);” (actually changes the password)
8. “SELECT ID, user_login, user_pass FROM (name-of-table-you-found);” (confirm that it was changed)
9. (type Control-D to exit mysql client)

Note: if you have a recent version of MySQL (version 5.x?) you can have MySQL compute the MD5 hash for you.

1. Skip step# 1 above.
2. Do the following for step# 7 instead.
   • “UPDATE (name-of-table-you-found) SET user_pass = MD5(‘(new-password)’) WHERE ID = (id#-of-account-you-are-reseting-password-for);” (actually changes the password)

Note that even if the passwords are salted, meaning they look like $P$BLDJMdyBwegaCLE0GeDiGtC/mqXLzB0, you can still replace the password with an MD5 hash, and WordPress will let you log in.

Reset your password – Documentation – WordPress.org