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How to Change Your Password in WordPress (Beginner’s Guide)

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Do you want to learn how to change your WordPress password? Sometimes you might forget your password or need to change it for security reasons.

While there is a lost password link on the login page that lets you reset your password, sometimes the WordPress password reset email never makes it to your inbox because your WordPress hosting company does not have it configured properly.

Other times, you might want to force change the WordPress password for every user on your website due to security reasons.

In this beginner’s guide, we will show you four different ways to change the WordPress password to cover every possible scenario.

How to Change Your Password in WordPress

Here is what we will cover in this tutorial:

Before You Change Your WordPress Password

We can’t emphasize enough that passwords are your first line of defense against hacking attempts on your WordPress website.

A lot of times users end up using a weak password because it’s easy to remember. Please don’t do that. You can use one of the many free and secure password managers.

Sometimes it might be tempting to share your WordPress passwords with team members or even contract developers. You should never do that.

Instead, we recommend creating a new user account with the right user role, so you can manage permissions.

This way you can easily delete their account when they’re no longer part of your team without having to change your main password.

That being said, let’s take a look at different ways to change your WordPress password.

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If you’d prefer written instructions, then just keep reading.

How to Change Your WordPress Password in 2 Minutes

This is the easiest way to change your WordPress password.

The first thing you need to do is log in to your WordPress website. You can do this by entering your WordPress login URL (for example, https://example.com/login/) in your browser.

Once you are logged in, go to Users » Your Profile from your WordPress menu.

Your Profile Page in WordPress

On the WordPress profile, you need to scroll down to the Account Management section.

Then, scroll until you see the ‘New Password’ option.

Generate Password in WordPress

Go ahead and click on the ‘Generate Password’ to add a new password.

WordPress will automatically create a strong password for you.

Auto Password in WordPress

You can continue with this strong password or change it with a new password of your own.

After that, click the ‘Update Profile’ button to save your new password.

Create a Strong WordPress Password and Save it

Once done, you will see a ‘Profile updated’ notification on the top.

WordPress will also send you a password change notification in your email inbox.

WordPress Profile Updated with New Password

How to Reset Your WordPress Password When Locked Out

The above method lets you change your password when you have access to your WordPress dashboard. But what if you lost your password and cannot log in?

Don’t panic, there is a super easy way to recover your lost password in WordPress.

You can simply go to the WordPress login page (https://example.com/wp-login.php) and click on the ‘Lost your password?’ link.

Recovering lost password in WordPress

After clicking on that, it will take you to the password reset page.

You need to either enter your username or email address to reset the password on your account.

WordPress password recovery screen

Once done, WordPress will send a password reset link to the email address associated with your user account.

For more details, see our guide on how to recover a lost password in WordPress.

How to Change the WordPress Password From Database

The ‘Lost Password’ method above is beginner friendly, but sometimes you won’t be able to use that method if you don’t have access to the email address associated with the account or if your WordPress site fails to send an email.

If such a situation comes up, then you will need to reset your WordPress password directly in the database. The easiest way to do that is by using phpMyAdmin.

First, you need to log in to your WordPress hosting account’s control panel. After that, click on the ‘phpMyAdmin’ option in the Databases section.

phpMyAdmin in cPanel

Note: Your screen might look different because each hosting provider has its own control panel. If you are having a hard time locating the phpMyAdmin link, then contact your hosting support.

After you launch the phpMyAdmin app, you will see a list of all your databases.

You need to select the database associated with your WordPress site.

Select your WordPress database

After that, you will see the list of tables in your WordPress database.

You need to look for the wp_users table in this list and click on the ‘Browse’ link next to it.

Browse user table

This will show you a list of all users on your WordPress site.

On this page, you need to click on the ‘Edit’ link next to your user account.

Edit user account in phpMyAdmin

phpMyAdmin will show you a form with all the user information fields.

You will need to delete the value in the user_pass field and replace it with your new password. Under the function column, make sure you select ‘MD5’ from the drop-down menu and then click on the ‘Go’ button.

Change password

That’s all, you have successfully changed your WordPress password.

For more details, see our guide on how to reset a WordPress password from phpMyAdmin.

How to Force Change WordPress Password for All Users

If your website was hacked, or your industry has certain data compliance regulations, then you might need to force change the WordPress password for all users.

This can be easily done using a password expiration plugin. For details on how to do this, see our guide on how to force change passwords in WordPress.

Expert Guides on WordPress Passwords

Now that you have learned how to change a password in WordPress, you may wish to see some of our other guides on WordPress passwords:

We hope this article helped you to learn how to change your password in WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on how to properly move from HTTP to HTTPS or our expert pick of tips to improve WordPress performance.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

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Editorial Staff

Editorial Staff at WPBeginner is a team of WordPress experts led by Syed Balkhi with over 16 years of experience in WordPress, Web Hosting, eCommerce, SEO, and Marketing. Started in 2009, WPBeginner is now the largest free WordPress resource site in the industry and is often referred to as the Wikipedia for WordPress.

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4 CommentsLeave a Reply

  1. Syed Balkhi says

    Hey WPBeginner readers,
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  2. Lonn Holiday says

    Hi,
    This no longer applies. There is now an account management section with a “new password” option. The interface is confusing as it says “Generate Password” and if one clicks this button they are given a single field to type a new password into. There is an indicator for password strength but no confirm field which is common on all other websites in the world today.

  3. Pooja says

    Hello

    please help me , how can i migrate Cpanel default email account ?

    i had hosting at godaddy but now i migrated it to Bluehost ..

    But the username of my wordpress and Cpanel default email both are same .. so is it pssible to migrate it ?

    will it affect to my wordpress after expiry of Old hosting account ?

  4. Jack says

    Rather than running MD5 generator you can just type in your password as you normally would in English then select MD5 from the drop down menu to the left when your in phpmyadmin wp-users. WP will generate it for you

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