resetting WordPress admin password
after managing to lock myself out of the admin section for the second time – I thought I should write up a very quick tutorial on how to change the master password. So here is just a quick step-by-step on how to reset your password for the main admin user – using phpMyAdmin. For this you will need access to the control panel of your server and be able to access your WordPress database via phpMyAdmin.
- 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.

- 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.

- to access the specific user details, ie the table data – click ‘browse’

- once you can see the exisiting users’ details – you can edit the specific details for the admin user as shown below:

- you will see all fields and values for the admin user and you can now type in your new password:

- as the last step before saving our new password – choose ‘MD5′ from function drop down menu

- 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. - 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
02/10/2009
Tittu says:Prisca,
A great tutorial as usual as I was locked out of my WP admin account. Thanks
Tittu
02/10/2009
prisca says:Tittu :)
glad I could help :)