By Princess Jones
Your website is your 24/7 representative of your business. It can spread your message or sell your products whether you’re around or not. WordPress is a versatile, user-friendly website platform that many small business owners use to power their online presence.
You can do a lot of things with WordPress — unless you get locked out of your account. Fortunately, if you do, you have a few options to recover your password.
The Easy Way
The easiest way to recover a WordPress password is to simply go to the login page. You may have a meta widget that includes the login link in your sidebar or footer. If not, try going to your website’s login page directly. It’s generally http://www.yoursite.com/wp-admin. (Just substitute “yoursite.com” with your actual website URL.)
Once there, click “Lost your password.” The next page will ask for your username or email. Then click “Get New Password.” You’ll receive an email with a link to reset your password.
The Less Easy Way
Maybe a user doesn’t have access to that email account anymore. Maybe they’ve tried the easy way but are having trouble receiving the reset email. That’s when an admin reset is the way to go. It requires someone with admin access to your WordPress installation to log in and edit the profile of the user who is locked out.
Click “Users” on the left side menu. Click “Edit” under the name of the user you want to edit. Scroll down and click “Generate Password.” WordPress will generate a new password for the user. (If you can’t see it, click “Show” next to the password field.) You can use that one or you can change it something else. Click “Update User.”
The Least Easy Way
But what if you’re the admin of your business’ website and there are no other admins to reset your password? Well then it gets a little more difficult. You can try the emergency password reset if you know your username and have access to the installation files of your site. Start by logging into your hosting dashboard and accessing your file manager.
Create a new file in the main folder. (It will be the one that also has the wp-config.php file.) Name the file “emergency.php.” Paste the script found on this page into the file and save it.
Next go to http://www.yourwebsite.com/emergency.php. (Don’t forget to substitute “yourwebsite.com” with your actual website URL. ) Enter the username and new password. Click “Update Options.” Go back to the login page and log into your WordPress website. Once you’ve confirmed you have access again, go back to your website file manager and delete the emergency.php file to prevent anyone else from using it to change your password.