1. go to your server control panel and open the database via phpMyAdmin.
   You will see your database listed by its name on the left hand side – click its name to access the WordPress data. This is only necessary if you have more than one database listed here – in my case, as you can see on the screenshot here – there is only one database and all tables are listed.
   
2. you will see the different tables, by default preceeded with the ‘wp_‘ – look for the ‘wp_users‘ table and click the browse button as shown below.
   
3. to access the specific user details, ie the table data – click ‘browse’
   
4. once you can see the exisiting users’ details – you can edit the specific details for the admin user as shown below:
   
5. you will see all fields and values for the admin user and you can now type in your new password:
   
6. as the last step before saving our new password – choose ‘MD5′ from function drop down menu
   
7. click ‘go’ to confirm and save your new password – and you’re done :-)
   Returning to the previous screen – you will notice your password has changed, now encoded shown again as a string of letters, numbers and symbols.
8. NOTE: you might need to delete the cookie for the site in order for the changes to take effect !

To give credit where credit is due – this is the page that helped me getting this problem solved: WordPress@ T2

Even though I have been working with WordPress for a while now (all work done live online using password protected folders) – I never had enough time to look into getting the server setup locally to work offline with on my themes and customisations. The local server setup was something I always really wanted to figure out – but being much more of a front end designer – I avoided the issue, being a coward really : ), running away from any complications which might slow me down or delay me – my workload not allowing much time to play.

For christmas I received a wonderful surprise in the form of a new mac book pro :) and so I was keen to get my dream machine setup with everything I wanted to use, including the local server. Doing some research online for tutorials and tips I found this amazing little app ;) and within minutes I was setup with my local server – importing all data from my DB, installing WP locally – now happily working on my WP sites offline ;)
In case you’d like to know – a quick run down:

1. download MAMP (free from living-e)
2. install MAMP directly into the applications folder
   (it is important to put the app directly into the applications folder – NOT into a subfolder within!)
3. launch MAMP – and you’re done :)

You should put all your files into the ‘htdocs’ folder within the MAMP folder itself (though you could change the location of this folder if you choose to) = Document Root: /Applications/MAMP/htdocs

Your local URL will by default be: http://localhost:8888

One last note on WP – to install WordPress – simply copy your WP files into the root folder, configuring the database connection as stated in the MAMP documentation (on the start page). Access the new WP site using the local URL and install as normal.

HAVE FUN :)