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WordPress For Beginners: What To Do If You Have Lost Or Forgotten A Password In WordPress

Learn How To Use WordPressAre you unable to get back into your WordPress site because you’ve forgotten your password?

Finding yourself unable to access your admin area because you can’t remember your password or username can be very frustrating.

Fortunately, if you are a WordPress user, there is always a way to get back into the backend of your website or blog.

In this WordPress troubleshooting step-by-step tutorial for non-technical WordPress users, you will learn how to recover a misplaced password or username and get back into your blog or website. We’ll go as far as we can without getting into complicated technical areas, and then, if the information still doesn’t help you get back in, we’ll explain to you what your other options for password recovery are.

Let’s start with the basics.

Incorrect Username/Password

If either your username or password are wrong when attempting to access your WP dashboard, you will see an error message like the one below displayed on your screen …

Recovering Passwords

Your first clue, is that if you get the username correct but the password wrong, WordPress will actually tell you this …

Changing Your Password

Tip

For security purposes, using the username “admin”.

This is the default installation username for WordPress and one of the leading causes of brute force attacks on WordPress sites.

What To Do If You Lose Or Forget Passwords

If you need to change your username, see this tutorial: Changing Your WP Admin Username

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If you have lost or forgotten your password, but you do know your username or email address, then click on the “Lost your password?” link in the login box …

WordPress Password Recovery

You can also access the lost password feature by clicking on the link at the bottom of the login box …

What To Do If You Have Forgotten Your Password

Alternatively, type the URL below into your browser (where “domain” is your domain name and “tld” is your domain extension, eg. “com”, “net”, “info”, etc.) …

What To Do If You Have Lost Or Forgotten A Password In WordPress

Enter your username or email and click on the Get New Password button …

What To Do If You Lose WordPress Passwords

Important

At this stage, there is no password “recovery” option. You will need to reset your password.

You will receive an email with a password reset link. Click on the link to reset your password.

WordPress Password Recovery

Enter a new password into the “Password reset” field. Make sure to choose a strong password containing upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols, like “*, #, %, @, $” etc …

What To Do If You Have Forgotten Your Login Password

Tip

Use a password generator tool if you need help coming up with strong passwords.

You can use a free password generator tool like PasswordsGenerator.net (shown below) …

Free Online Password Generator

Or use a password management software like RoboForm, which is not only great for generating strong passwords, but also for storing and managing all your online passwords …

Roboform - Password Management Software

Use A Password Generator Tool To Help You Create A Strong Password

After resetting your password, log in using your new password …

What To Do If You Forget Or Lose The Login Password

Changing Your Password

To change your password inside WordPress, log into your admin and select Edit My Profile from the “Howdy, User” dropdown menu near the top-right hand corner of your screen …

What To Do If You Lose The Login Password

You can also access your “Profile” area by selecting Users > Your Profile from your main admin menu.

Towards the bottom part of the page, you will see the “change password” section. Enter a new password and confirm this password here.

Note: Use the WordPress password strength meter to help you avoid using weak passwords and set up a strong password.

What To Do If You Have Lost Or Misplaced Passwords

Click the Update Profile button when finished to update your password settings.

What To Do If You Have Lost Or Forgotten A Password In WordPress

What If I Don’t Know My Username And Password?

The above steps work if you’ve forgotten your password but you still remember your username or email address.

How can you log in if you’ve lost both your username and password?

You can still access your WordPress site, but a little technical intervention is required.

Important

As this tutorial is really designed for non-technical WordPress users, we recommend that if the information above hasn’t helped you get back into your WordPress backend, then either contact someone who can provide you with technical assistance (i.e. your webmaster, website support person or your webhost) and let them know that you need to reset your WordPress Password from phpMyAdmin, or you can try using the method below, which will reveal your username and email address, so you at least you can get your password reset and log back in.

All you need is admin access to your server’s control panel. Don’t worry, you won’t be changing anything … you’re only taking a look!

Important

If you feel hesitant about working inside your web server or database, then please ask a professional to assist you.

In the example below, the server is using the cPanel management software …

What To Do If You Lose Or Forget Passwords In WordPress

cPanel management software

Log into your server admin account …

What To Do If You Lose Or Forget Your Password

cPanel administration area

Scroll down to the “Databases” section and click on phpMyAdmin

What To Do If You Have Forgotten Or Lost Passwords

phpMyAdmin

Click on your WP database.

Note: If you have a number of databases set up on your domain, make sure you choose the right one …

Changing Your Password

phpMyAdmin databases

Don’t be concerned about the technical-looking nature of the information on your screen.

Click on wp_users

What To Do If You Have Forgotten Your Login Password

phpMyAdmin databases

You will see a list of all your site’s users with their usernames and registered emails. Typically, the first line is assigned to the site administrator, but if you have more users and need to locate their username or email, then scroll down the list until you find what you are looking for …

WordPress Password Recovery

Important

Note: The user password is also included in this section of your WP database (in the “user_pass” column”), but as you can see from the screenshot above, it is encrypted.

Due to security purposes, WordPress stores all passwords as a cryptographic hash function (MD5 Hash) rather than plain text. This prevents even the site administrator from knowing a user’s password.

To replace this password requires using an encryption tool that lets you generate an MD5 hash, which you would then copy and paste into the password field. You can search for “free MD5 generators online” if you want to change the password yourself, but as suggested earlier, ask for professional assistance if you really don’t know what you are doing, and want to avoid causing errors.

Now that you have retrieved your username and email address, log out of your server, return to the login screen and request a new password …

Retrieving Your WordPress Password

Hopefully, this tutorial has helped you get back into your site and you can now resume working.

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