Have you ever tried to change your WordPress username just to find out that it cannot be changed? If you are, well then this article is for you. In this article, we will show you three different methods to change your WordPress username.
Video Tutorial
If you don’t like the video or need more instructions, then continue reading.
Method 1: Create a New User and Delete The Old One
The easiest way to change your WordPress username is by creating a new user with your desired username and with the administrator user role. You will need to use a different email address than the one used by the old account.
Now you need to logout and then login with the new user account you just created. Go to the Users section and click on the Delete link under your old username
While deleting your old user, WordPress will ask what you want to do with their content. Make sure that you click on ‘Attribute all content to:’ option and then select the new user you just created. Click on the ‘Confirm Deletion’ button to delete the old user account.
That’s all you have successfully changed your WordPress username. If you want you can change the email address of the new user to use the old email address associated with the old username.
Method 2: Change Username by Using a Plugin
Another simple way to change your WordPress username is by using a plugin. If you are one of those users who don’t want to install a plugin for every little thing, then let us assure you that you can safely delete the plugin once you have changed your WordPress username.
First thing you need to do is install and activate the Username Changer plugin. Upon activation, simply go to Users » Username Changer page.
Select the username you want to change, and then enter the new username. Click on the save changes button and you are done.
Method 3: Change Your WordPress Username Using phpMyAdmin
This method is a little bit complicated as it requires making direct changes to your WordPress database. We usually don’t recommend users to make direct changes to their WordPress database. However, in some cases you may not have any other option. Like for example, if you have forgotten your WordPress username and email address, then you will not be able to access the admin dashboard to change username.
Using this method, you can find your username and you will also be able to change it.
First thing you need to do is login to your cPanel. Scroll down to the databases section and click on phpMyAdmin.
Next you need to select the database that your blog is hosted in.
You will see your WordPress database tables. By default, WordPress database tables use wp_ as prefix before each table’s name. It is possible that you may have been using some other prefix.
Click on the table wp_users on the left hand side. Then click edit on the username that you want to edit.
Change the user_login value to whatever you want. For example you can replace ‘admin’ to ‘bob’
Hit the Go button and you are done.
That’s all, we hope this article helped you learn how to change your WordPress username. You may also want to check out our guide on what to do when you are locked out of WordPress admin area.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Google+.
Thank You! php way worked perfectly!
Appreciate the info given here. I was able to use PhpMyadmin to change the user name. But on logging in to my WordPress site, the info on my dashboard is so limited. The new username that was there before i deleted the wrong one with Admin role had Author’s role. Could this be why I am not granted full access to my editing dashboard where I could add more users and edit normally?
Somebody help me out here. How do I get back to my full dashboard editing suite and change my role to Admin?
Why won’t your website let me create an account? When ever I try it says to try again with no explanation.
Hi Jake,
Where you are trying to sign up? If you are trying to join WPBeginner Videos, then we just tested the form its working fine.
I have used the plugin ‘username changer’ and now my account is gone?! What happend and how can I undo this?
Hi Linda,
Try to recover the password first. If this fails, then you can try resetting admin password via phpmyadmin.
Thank you so much. You just saved my laptop from going through a window.
I tried doing this to edit the nice-name attribute, so I don’t leak my user name on the Author’s page, and now my site only shows: Error establishing a database connection. Even after re-naming the field to its original value it doesn’t fix it. Any suggestions?
Thank you! Finding so much help for setting up my new WP account. I’m transferring an existing blog from Blogger. (And existing Google domain.) Any things you’ve already done on that would be great!!! I’ll be searcher your site a lot!
just successfully used the plugin to change my user name – it was really easy then just deleted the plug in – really really useful – thank-you
Hi i can not find username changer under users
You can simple do this without the plugin. You have to create a user, and for that you have to click on Add New button in the Users section, input the username whatever you want to and then assign the role of it to Administrator then log out. Now log in using newly created username and go into the same section that is Users and now can simply delete the old admin user.
Hi There. It did seem to work, but it did not attribute all the content. So my bio, my social media links, and Gravatar photo are gone. I can’t figure out how to get all that back.
Hi
I can’t get this to work, I have tried other tutorials and they say just the same.
I am in the right database as there is only one and I have edited the old admin username that was originally set up i.e. admin and it won’t allow me to login.
In the database it has clearly changed but when I try to login it won’t allow me. So using the old admin username gets me back in but how? it has been changed it doesn’t exist anymore….
If I view the Users in WordPress my new username is not there so where is it getting these details from?
I am truly baffled.
Colin
You may want to try changing the password to your admin user within wordpress. It would be good to have another temp Admin level user in WP as a backup.
If you’re using phpmyadmin, open the password field, choose a new password and IMPORTANT! choose the MD5 function (or this will NOT work).
Once you change the password, try logging in to your old username account. Try doing this in Incognito mode in Chrome so you have NO cookies set. It shouldn’t let you login. If it IS still logging in, double check you’re in the right DB. I know you said you were, but check the wp-config.php file anyhow.
Extra hint. If you don’t want to setup another email address, and you use Gmail, you can add a + to the end of a gmail address and it will go to the same mailbox: e.g.
Hi
Thanks for the reply Gary, I ended up deleting everything on that domain name as it had other WordPress installations so somewhere it went wrong.
Once I did this the information in the tutorial worked but it was so frustrating why it didn’t.
Good job I only used that domain name for testing websites.
Cheers
Colin
Hello. I thank you for sharing this article. I want to know if it is necessary to change your username after installing WordPress
If you are using a username like admin, administrator, then yes you should change it.
thank you thank you. When I am in troubles I always find a helpful answer in your website. Kind regards!!
How do I even find my cPanel login details? My site is hosted by GoDaddy but built on WordPress, and the GoDaddy account belongs to my editor. I keep asking him if he can find out but it’s been weeks now. My website was restored by someone else who had another kind of access point, but I need that login. How exactly do I find out those details because my WordPress login isn’t the same.
it won’t work. i added a new admin (while still keeping the old), but when i log out, it won’t log me back in using the new admin and password (which i didn’t change!). not sure what to do now. help!
I used the first method and I am unable to delete the other user. Has anyone run into this issue? Now that I have another user with the username I actually want I am concerned that I can’t move on to method 2 or 3 because the username is already in use.
Hi, My site is still under construction, when I was setting it up I followed the steps I had printed out instead of listening to the audio too. I only realised afterwards that I shouldn’t have used my real email address as the username as this will be visible once I start posting. Which method above would you recommend I follow to make the necessary change as I haven’t yet got any content to worry about losing?
The other thing I keep getting really confused about is when I am asked for my email address do they mean my real one or the one that is part of website that I would like to handle?
Thanks
Sarah
Sarah you can add as many users account to your WordPress site as you want. Simply go to the Users page in admin area and then click on add new. You can add users with different roles like administrator (site owner), editor, author, etc. If you are the only one using your site, then a user with administrator role is all you need. After you have created a user name that you like, feel free to delete the old one that you do not wish to use anymore.
The email address they ask will be used to send you notification emails. It has to be any existing email address that you already use.
WordPress itself is not an email client and it will not create an email address as part of your website. If you want to have a branded email address with your own domain name like sarah@example.com, then see our guide on how to setup a professional email address with Google Apps and Gmail
Great tip. Thank you!
Thank you, admin, after reading your blog I have successfully changed the usernames of my blog bestcmsplugins.com ,
You are doing a great job by helping others
This was so quick and simple! Thank you so much!
I did it and when i went on my new account it doesn’t show users tab or any other tabs
Thank you so much! The first method worked flawlessly.
At last someone who really makes it easy. Well done and thank you.
Thanks
Thank you. The Plugin worked perfectly
Thank you so much for this article. I took the phpMyAdmin route and it worked… But, before it started working it did this weird thing where if I entered the url of the user’s profile it took me to the home page.
But then in the end it worked. Probably because I saved the profile from wp-admin after having changed the user_login and the user_nicename values from phpMyAdmin?
That’s for the great advice. The plugin was the most easiest way.
Too many places to reply so I’ll create a new comment.
I’m one of those people that don’t like to just add another plugin (even if I can remove it afterwards) and so even after reading about the create new user/delete user/migrate posts method, I liked the phpmyadmin method.
But it does cripple multisite installs and you really should update the main post about that.
For anyone who does do it the database way, you have to go into your sitemeta table and update the superadmin user with the new username and character count in the S:flag.
Otherwise, the create/delete/migrate method might actually be a better option
Here is the way I did it – very quick and easy, took me less than 5 minutes to do:
1. Go to users
2. Click on the user name you want to change
3. Above the “Update Profile” button, there will be text that reads “Were you looking for your API Key and other Personal Settings”. The ‘API Key and other Personal Settings’ text will be highlighted (as it is a link).
4. Click on this highlighted text.
5. Scrolls down the page to the heading “Account Details”
6. Just under “Account Details” will be ‘User Name’
7. You will see next to your user name there will be the word ‘Change’ in brackets, also in highlighted text (indicating it is a link).
8. Click on this text to change your user name.
9. Don’t forget to save
10. You can change all other linked settings from here, such as BLOG NAME, PRIMARY BLOG, etc,
Hello,
Thanks for the article! Out of curiosity, would a change of my WP login username prompt a DISCONNECT to wordpress.com jetpack stats and tools?
I’m asking b/c today, I changed it (due to tireless notifications of site lockout attempts from….who knows?), and now my jetpack stats are all screwy and wordpress.com no longer recognizes my website. I’m getting this error message:
unknown_token: It looks like your Jetpack connection is broken. Try disconnecting from WordPress.com then reconnecting.
But no further instructions on what to do. Love to know your thoughts.
Thanks! LOVE your all of your content!
A word to the wise, from someone who wasn’t. Using that plugin can be fatal to a multisite setup. Multisite does not allow the user name of the superadmin to be changed. And there is no warning about this on the plugin site. But because the plugin just twiddles with the name fields of the database it gaily ignores this. So if you use it, be prepared to lose all access to the network. This might not happen if the name you change it to happens to have the same number of characters as the name you are changing from. I am not about to prove this point though, once bitten and all that. The remedy is then only direct editing of the database to restore precisely, and I do mean precisely including cap and lower case usage, what was there before.
Hi,
i successfully changed username on the multisite installation.
I have changed username directly in sql database.
First of all backup your db.
You have to change username in tables:
_users in fields: user_login and user_nicename
_usermetadata field nickname and
_sitemeta field site_admins
in the field site_admins be careful to change the name admin and number of letters before admin in variable s:5
admin username has 5 letters, change it to number of letter in your new name
Delete cookies in browser, login again to your WP admin and you have network access with your new username
Does it make sense to change the user ID as well?
Here is something odd that I’ve noticed today.
I did not like it that my (admin) username was visible in the author URL. So I decided to create a new user with author role and since I’ve made this new user the author URLs are the same as the screennames.
So now I can use my admin account again since the screenname is visible in the URLs and not my actual username.
Any explanation for this?
WordPress uses the username in the Author URLs. If the admin user still has posts then their author URL will still appear on those posts. You can assign those posts to new author account you created and set a redirect for the admin url.
Everything about WPbeginner.com is awesome. This article and all I have come across from the same source worked for me. Just want to say a big thanks to wpbeginner.com editorial saff. Cheers!
Would the process “Create a New User and Delete The Old One” work properly from network admin area on a multisite installation?
It worked! Many thanks!
This change may or may not be a big problem for a given wordpress site based on the plugins and theme it is using. What if there is a plugin that uses an external system that associates data with username? The simple change outlined here would fail to update that username in the external system and the association between the user and that external data would be broken with this change. What about forum posts in bbpress where a user mentions another user by username?
I guess a basic wordpress blog install wouldn’t have too many problems with this, but beyond that you better have awareness of the other plugins and theme dependencies on username. If none, this simple change could be fine.
Yes And we’ve seen this week where this all can lead to. Patching up plugins, fixing holes, hoping the theme has no holes, then after seeing the notorious scammers all have the name, changing username etc. But luckily we can change the name. There’s no other option when all is leaked out. Yes security. Having a good security plugin. Securi I found too difficult to understand. Anyway, there are certainly more problems to fix soon.. boy oh boy.
Hi, I want change my existing blog authority in another login id example: i make 5 blog with my own id and now i want change 1 blog login and password with another email is , can this possible , if possible please help.
There is nowhere else it needs to change. Everything is attributed to the ID of the user, not the username. It’s just a text field like email, first_name etc.
So you have a certainty that ever plugin and theme written for wordpress follows that guidance? What about plugins that share username with external systems which make data associates with that?
Wow, did phpmyadmin solution… literally 3 seconds of work…
Big thank you!
Yet another informative tutorial from you
Let me tell you honestly, I am totally the non-techie so I had NO idea about how to change the admin username till some time back – nor do I visit the C-Panel – I fear those places…lol…
My friend takes care of the tech aspects, though I’ve learnt it all now and thanks to you all of you tech bloggers sharing your posts here, I keep learning each day!
Yes, for security reasons, you need to change the usernames, more so with the number of cases of hackers all over the web. Better to be safe than sorry later.
Thanks for sharing.…. keep up the good work…
Well the 1st ine didn’t work but the 2nd one did…
Stijn’s way is my favorite way. Haha
Thanks. I knew it before. Another process is given by Stijn Vogels. I do that sometimes. But phpmyadmin process is much easier if you have cpanel details.
Worked for me. Thank you.
Hey,
Thanks for taking time to write this. I was thinking it is impossible to change….Thanks a lot
That’s good idea, thanks i think found the right way to change user name any more, which make me crazy time.
how can i change user name from the hosted website if i can’t access the database of all the users?
Thanks
BTW
why not choose desired name that appear for that username
You make work easier for hackers. Because when hackers want to access your site, they start with the desired, sitename and initials.
Thnxxx for this amazing article. I was eager to change my username. finally i got solution.
Very Very Useful Thanks a lot for sharing,it saved lot of time…
Thanks, worked a treat. Instead of ‘Usernames cannot be changed’ why doesn’t it say ‘Usernames can only be changed in your hosting cPanel’ Thanks fir the tutorial