Is the wp-admin area of WordPress not working? Are you unable to login to the wp-admin area? Don’t panic, here is a list of solutions to reset wp-admin password manually from either FTP, Database or cPanel.
If you forgot the password for your wp-amin area and are unable to reset the password (you have no access to the registered email), there is a simple way how to manually create a new password for a WordPress user.
If you got your WordPress installation setup using the Softaculous Application Installer or the Installatron, the easiest way to reset WordPress password is by going to the cPanel and reseting the password in the Softaculous app.
Step 1. Log in to your website cPanel by adding /cpanel to your website address in the browser, for example my-website.com/cpanel
Step 2. After logging into cPanel with the login information provided to you by your hosting, scroll down and from the Software section select Softaculous/Installatron.
Step 3. Open the Softaculous/Installatron application installer and from the list of all installed applications (in case you have more than one), select the installation that you want to reset wp-admin password for.
Step 4. After clicking on the desired WordPress installation you will see all the information that you set when you’ve installed the WordPress CMS. Simply add a new password in the Administrator Password field and click on the Save button.
That’s it, you have successfully reset the WordPress wp-admin password from the Installatron/Softaculous in the cPanel.
If you have not installed WordPress using the Softaculous/Installatron application installer from the cPanel, than you should reset the password directly from the MySQL database.
Step 1. To reset the password manually from the database you need to login to the cPanel and from the list under Databases select phpMyAdmin.
Step 2. From the list of the database on the left, select the database that you use for your WordPress website. If there is more than one database in the list and you don’t know which database your site is using, simply open the wp-config.php file of your website and find the the database name in there.
Step 3. After selecting your database, click on the wp_users table which contains the information about your users and then click on the Edit link before the user that you want to reset the password for.
Step 4. under the user_pass column, set the new password for the user under Null Value and then make sure to select MD5 from the Function dropdown and then click on the Go button to save new information.
NOTE: It’s very important to select the MD5 option from the dropdown, because that way the password will be encrypted using the MD5 method.
Another way to reset the password if your WordPress wp-admin area is not working is using the wp_set_password function from your theme’sfunctions.php file. This can be done either via FTP that requires a special client like FileZilla or from the cPanel > File Manager.
Step 1. Open the functions.php file located in your theme folder with a code/text editor.
wp-content > themes > THEME-NAME > functions.php
Step 2. Add the following code: wp_set_PASSWORD( ‘Add-Password-Here’, i ); to the beginning of the file and save the file. Note: replace “Add-Password-Here” with your desired password.
Now login to the wp-admin area with the new password, and once you successfully login, remove the added line from the functions.php file.
If you have followed any of the above guides you have reset your WordPress admin password and are now able to login to the wp-admin area but this does not mean that the problem is gone! We recommend that you address the reason why you were unable to reset the password from the login page, that way you won’t have this problem reoccurring in the future.