How to Change WordPress Passwords

I’m writing this post about how to change WordPress passwords based upon a recent experience with a client, who found himself in a very unfortunate predicament. I won’t repeat the details of it here, but this experience shows why understanding how to resolve such a seemingly small thing as changing a WordPress password can actually be a quite major deal.

You can read about this experience here: An Unfortunate WordPress Admin Login Problem.

Regardless of this experience, knowing hot to change your WordPress password is important:

• It will help to protect your WordPress account against hacking attempts.
• You’ll understand what to do if you lock yourself out of your WordPress account and can’t remember your password.

Two Ways How to Change WordPress Passwords

Changing WordPress passwords is quite straightforward and I’m going to show you two ways to do so:

1. From the WordPress Admin when you’re logged into your account and want to change you’re password to tighten up security.
2. When you’re logged out of WordPress and cannot log in because you’ve forgotten your password (it happens to us all!).

Both of these methods are very simple.

Ho to Change Your Password in WordPress Admin

This for most WordPress users would be the “natural” place to reset passwords. Here’s how to do it…

1. From your WordPress Admin Dashboard click the Users link. This presents you with all user accounts with access to your WordPress blog.
2. Select your user profile by clicking on your username and your Profile page will load. This enables you to update details relating to your account including your password.
3. Look in the Account Management section for New Password option. Next to it is a button entitled Generate Password.
4. Click the Generate Password button and WordPress automatically presents you with a very strong (but probably difficult to remember!) password.
5. You can either choose to accept the password WordPress provides you or overwrite it with something you’d prefer to use.
6. Once you’ve decided on a password you just need to click the Update Profile button.

That’s it… you’re new password will be saved.

How to Change Lost WordPress Passwords

This is useful if you’ve locked yourself out of WordPress and can’t remember your password to log in. Here’s how you do it.

1. Visit your WordPress login page. This will normally be: yourdomain.com/wp-admin.
2. Beneath the login fields is a link to reset your password titled Lost your password?
3. Click the link and WordPress will send a mail to the email address registered to the account.
4. The email contains a password reset link, which you just need to click and then follow the subsequent instructions to reset your password.
5. Once you submit your new password, WordPress will ask you to login with it.

There’s probably nothing new to you about this process since it’s pretty self-explanatory and is a very commonly accepted technique for resetting passwords for sites where you sign in with an account.

However… it’s perhaps not as intuitive a process as you might think if you’re not used to using tools such as WordPress.

Summary

• It’s quite simple to change your WordPress password.
• You can change your WordPress password through the Admin dashboard (when you’re logged in) or through the password reset process if you’ve forgotten it.
• If you want to change your WordPress password because you’ve forgotten your previous one, you’ll need access to the email account attached to the WordPress account. Without it you won’t be able to use the password reset process.
• You can reset a lost password at yourdomain.com/wp-admin: the same URL you use to login to your WordPress account.
• You should regularly change your WordPress password as a security measure to protect your blog.

As a shameless plug, I’ve used RoboForm Password Manager for around a decade to store all of my passwords securely. You can store your passwords in the RoboForm mobile app, back them up with RoboForm Everywhere (for extra protection) and access them online through a browser plugin too.

That’s it for now.

Paul

I welcome comments! Please leave a comment below and let me know if you’ve ever had issues with how to change YOUR WordPress password!

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