{"id":81,"date":"2026-03-14T00:39:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-14T00:39:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zerotoghost.com\/?p=81"},"modified":"2026-03-18T20:07:05","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T20:07:05","slug":"what-to-do-when-you-forget-your-wp-admin-password","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zerotoghost.com\/?p=81","title":{"rendered":"What to do When You Forget Your WP-Admin Password"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Even in the age of password managers, I&#8217;m still horrible about not saving things correctly (or forgetting key bits of information relevant to logins). So if you ever find yourself locked out of your wordpress.org blog, here&#8217;s 3 ways you can get back in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">1 &#8211; If you have a separate admin and user account (recommended setup):<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>To change your password in current versions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>In the Administration Screen, menu, go to Users &gt; All Users.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Click on your username in the list to edit it.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>In the Edit User screen, scroll down to the New Password section and click the Generate Password button.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>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.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Click the Update User button.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>Your new password becomes active immediately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"612\" height=\"408\" src=\"https:\/\/zerotoghost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/istockphoto-1281210009-612x612-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-82\" srcset=\"https:\/\/zerotoghost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/istockphoto-1281210009-612x612-1.jpg 612w, https:\/\/zerotoghost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/istockphoto-1281210009-612x612-1-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 612px) 100vw, 612px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Passwords &#8211; the bane of my existence <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">2 &#8211; Use password reset feature:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>At the login screen, typically yourblog.com\/wp-admin, enter username or email and click &#8216;reset password&#8217;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you&#8217;re unlucky like me, your inbox will destroy any emails sent and this wont work. Hopefully this doesn&#8217;t happen for you, because it&#8217;s the easiest and most straightforward method.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">3 &#8211; Log into your wp back-end and manually update the mysql database:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Create a MD5 hash of your new password. Here&#8217;s a link to a simple web based one: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.miraclesalad.com\/webtools\/md5.php\">https:\/\/www.miraclesalad.com\/webtools\/md5.php<\/a> OR on Unix\/Linux:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Create file called new-wp.txt with ONLY the new password in it.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>echo -n &#8216;your_password_here&#8217; | md5sum (-n removes new-line)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>save that string somewhere for later<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Connect to your droplet\/lightsail\/ec2\/etc (instance)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><code>mysql -u root -p<\/code> \/\/ (and enter your mysql password. if you don&#8217;t know this, you should be able to find it in root\/ do an <code>ls -al<\/code> and look for .digital-ocean_password or similar)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><code>LIST DATABASES;<\/code><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>USE (name of database, probably &#8220;wordpress&#8221;);<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><code>SHOW TABLES;<\/code> \/\/ looking for one with &#8220;users&#8221;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><code>SELECT ID, user_login, user_pass FROM (name of table);<\/code>\/\/ This shows us information about users, including user ID and name<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><code>UPDATE (name of table) SET user_pass=\"(md5 string)\" WHERE ID = (relevant user ID); <\/code>this changes password<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>(type Control-D to exit mysql client)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Hopefully one of these helped! Drop a comment with other methods or stories of when you got locked out of an application.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Even in the age of password managers, I&#8217;m still horrible about not saving things correctly (or forgetting key bits of information relevant to logins). So if you ever find yourself locked out of your wordpress.org blog, here&#8217;s 3 ways you can get back in. 1 &#8211; If you have a&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":82,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[15,14],"class_list":["post-81","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tipstricks","tag-mysql","tag-wordpress"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zerotoghost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zerotoghost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zerotoghost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zerotoghost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zerotoghost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=81"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/zerotoghost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":115,"href":"https:\/\/zerotoghost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions\/115"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zerotoghost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/82"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zerotoghost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=81"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zerotoghost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=81"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zerotoghost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=81"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}