How to reset the admin password in Wordpress 3

Lost or forgot the password of the admin user in your Wordpress 3 installation? Follow the instructions below to reset it.

Notice: This information in this article is also valid for Wordpress 2 for versions 2.5 or later.

Wordpress stores your password in an encrypted form that is not designed to be decrypted. That is why this article tells you how reset your password to something brand new, rather than remember the existing one.

Short answer for advanced users

Open the table "wp_users", locate the row for the administrator and set the value of the field "user_pass" to

$P$Bz2Yo2b9B1H3WvRM.QeIzXI2GuCkMt1

Your admin's password is now set to "password". You can login and change it to something else.

More explanatory answer for regular users

In order to change the password you need to have access to your MySQL database. Most of the web hosting companies offer "phpMyAdmin" which is a tool that gives you access and control over your database. If you have some other software instead of phpMyAdmin you may use that.

You have to be very careful with that tool. The changes you make may be irreversible. If you make a mistake it may not be undone, so you do need to have a backup before editing your database. If you don't have some basic training, you'd better let someone else do it for you.

If you can find phpMyAdmin move to the next paragraph. If not, open the notes you have regarding access to your web hosting service. Most of you have a system called either "cPanel" or "Plesk" to manage your hosting service. Open that, and look for "phpMyAdmin", "Database" or "MySQL". You should now be able to find the phpMyAdmin control panel.

Open phpMyAdmin and look at the column on the left. You must be looking at a list of tables. The first ones should be:
wp_comments
wp_links
wp_options

If you don't see that list of tables then probably your setup has many databases and the left column shows them instead. Click on each of the databases until you find the one with the list of tables as described above.

You should now be able to see that list of tables. Go down the list, find the table "wp_users" and open it.

The users table is now open, so the main part of your screen lists the users in your database. If not, make sure you click the "Browse" button on the top, not the "Structure" button.

Normally the first record (line) of that table is for the main user of the system. If you are not sure of what you see, the main user usually has the field "ID" set to "1" and the field "user_login" to "admin". Latest versions of Wordpress allow you to use a user-name of your choice for the site's main user, so in your case you may be looking for another user-name instead of "admin".

Click the "Edit" link in the record (line) for admin.

Find the field "user_pass" and use the text box to set the new password record. Set it to

$P$Bz2Yo2b9B1H3WvRM.QeIzXI2GuCkMt1

Click the "Go" or "Save" button on the bottom of the page.

That's it. Your admin's password is now set to "password".

You should now be able to login. When you login you should go to Wordpress's user control panel and change that password to something else that only you know.