Title: Lost Admin Username Last modified: August 19, 2016 --- # Lost Admin Username * [kirascurro](https://wordpress.org/support/users/kirascurro/) * (@kirascurro) * [17 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/lost-admin-username/) * A friend of mine had a website tech set up his blog for him using his company’s name. Then the tech disappeared. Now, my friend can see the blog on a web page, but can’t get into it and doesn’t want to use another name to set up another blog. Using his company’s name is important for marketing. * Is there any way to get into the site by proving to Word Press he’s the owner of the company for which the blog is named? Nothing has been added to the blog since the website tech set it up. * Thanx for any help… Viewing 14 replies - 1 through 14 (of 14 total) * [MichaelH](https://wordpress.org/support/users/michaelh/) * (@michaelh) * [17 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/lost-admin-username/#post-863485) * If your are NOT talking about a wordpress.COM blog, then you could use something like phpMyAdmin to look at the wp_user table to find out the user names. * This topic, though discusses resetting passwords, will be helpful to you: [http://wordpress.org/support/topic/181950?replies=1](http://wordpress.org/support/topic/181950?replies=1) * [kps144](https://wordpress.org/support/users/kps144/) * (@kps144) * [17 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/lost-admin-username/#post-863917) * I have lost both my username and password for my wordpress blog. How do I reset them so I can do anything with my site? Log-in username would be enough but without that I can do absolutely nothing with my site. I have no technical or programing or code reading/writing knowledge at all so I’m completely stuck. Does Word Press provide any kind of secure verification for help so that I can get a solution to this? KP * [whooami](https://wordpress.org/support/users/whooami/) * (@whooami) * [17 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/lost-admin-username/#post-863918) * The normal options for self-hosted blogs are spelled out in the thread Michael linked to. * [http://wordpress.org/support/topic/181950?replies=1](http://wordpress.org/support/topic/181950?replies=1) * [kps144](https://wordpress.org/support/users/kps144/) * (@kps144) * [17 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/lost-admin-username/#post-863919) * Thank you but I’ve looked at that message and as I said the jargon of programing is unintelligible to me so if it isn’t available in straight forward layman’s terms it’s not going to be accessible to me. I need something like when I phone a support center for my godaddy hosting I just provide them with some security info and they provide me with the information I need to log in and alter what I need to alter. * [figaro](https://wordpress.org/support/users/figaro/) * (@figaro) * [17 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/lost-admin-username/#post-863920) * Did you try the “Lost your password” link on your login screen? * [whooami](https://wordpress.org/support/users/whooami/) * (@whooami) * [17 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/lost-admin-username/#post-863921) * > I need something like when I phone a support center for my godaddy hosting > I just provide them with some security info and they provide me with the information > I need to log in and alter what I need to alter. * nifty idea — except that there’s no-one to call. * > I have no technical or programing or code reading/writing knowledge at all > so I’m completely stuck. * you can follow directions and copy and paste? * Thought about actually hiring someone to do the stuff that you cant get? * [Saurus](https://wordpress.org/support/users/saurus/) * (@saurus) * [17 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/lost-admin-username/#post-863922) * Is this really hard to understand? If it is, perhaps you should listen to whooami and hire help to administer your company blog. * 1. Log into phpMyAdmin from hosts control panel. 2. Click on the Databases link and then click on the database you want to edit from the list that appears. 3. You will now be faced with a list of tables in that database. From this point on I’m assuming that you used the default “wp_” prefix for your WordPress tables. 4. In the right-hand pane scroll down to “wp_users” and click on the “Browse” icon (if you hover over the icons you’ll notice a tooltip appear). 5. You’ll now see the list of users for the site. The Admin will be the user with the ID number 1. Assuming that’s you, click on the “Edit” icon next to this to edit it (again, hover long enough and you’ll see a tooltip appear). 6. You’ll now see all the details associated with the Admin user. **The field that you are interested in is labeled “user_pass”.** This field contains the password that have been encoded using the MD5 one-way hash which turns the password that was used into a string that is 32 alphanumeric characters long. Don’t bother trying to reverse the hash back to the password! Consider the password lost! 7. Into the “user_pass” field, type in your new password. **REMEMBER THIS PASSWORD!!!** 8. Now your new password will be not stored in the database as the plain text password you just typed in (which would make it easy to steal) but rather as an MD5 hash of the password. So the next important step is to convert your password. Fortunately, phpMyAdmin offers a really easy way to do this. **From the “Function” field select “MD5”.** 9. Once you’ve made that change, scroll to the bottom of the screen and click “Go”. The password will be hashed using MD5 and stored in the database. 10. Log out of phpMyAdmin. 11. One final thing. If you’re using WordPress 2.0 or higher you’ll need to delete the WordPress cache file. Using your FTP program (or cPanel file manager) delete all the contents of the /wp- content/cache folder. 12. Now log into your WordPress blog using the new password and start blogging again! * [kps144](https://wordpress.org/support/users/kps144/) * (@kps144) * [17 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/lost-admin-username/#post-863923) * Where do I find the “phpMyAdmin” ? * [shifuimam](https://wordpress.org/support/users/shifuimam/) * (@shifuimam) * [17 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/lost-admin-username/#post-863924) * If you’re with GoDaddy, there should be a URL they gave you to access your MySQL databases from phpMyAdmin. I can’t remember off the top of my head what the URL should look like, but if you can’t find the link in your GoDaddy account (e.g. log in to their website and see what you can find), call or email them for the information. * [kps144](https://wordpress.org/support/users/kps144/) * (@kps144) * [17 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/lost-admin-username/#post-863925) * Also the password isn’t the problem, I don’t have the login name. If I had the login name I’d be able to reset the password on the login screen for lost password. * But aside from the slightly snide tones (you know who you are) it’s really good to see all of the people chiming in to give their instructions. It’s actually much more than I expected. * Anyway as I don’t even know WTF the “phpMyAdmin” thing is you can easily wrap your minds around how absent my knowledge of these things is. If it isn’t fixable I can just copy and paste (which I can do BTW) the entire site and rebuild it from scratch again if necessary. * Even so, all of you swarming to help me get this s**t figured out is very cool. Thanks. * [kps144](https://wordpress.org/support/users/kps144/) * (@kps144) * [17 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/lost-admin-username/#post-863926) * When I called Godaddy last night they said they couldn’t help at all but your suggestion sounds somehow viable. I’ll take it under advisement and give them another call and reference your suggestion. Thanks * [shifuimam](https://wordpress.org/support/users/shifuimam/) * (@shifuimam) * [17 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/lost-admin-username/#post-863927) * Google “phpMyAdmin” to learn about it. I know that you’re new to all this and don’t know left from right when it comes to programming, but the only way you’re going to learn is to take a little initiative and research stuff on your own. There is an enormous amount of information on the Internet on things like “what’s phpMyAdmin” and “how do I reset my WordPress password”. * It is a web interface for managing MySQL databases, providing a graphical front- end to work with your data. * Once you can get into phpMyAdmin, you will be able to follow the instructions to view the table of users, where you will be able to directly see all the usernames registered with your WordPress installation. You should then be able to determine the username you’re looking for. * [kps144](https://wordpress.org/support/users/kps144/) * (@kps144) * [17 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/lost-admin-username/#post-863928) * And what a surprise, the best advice I got came from one named “shifuIMAM. Very cool. * [misterwarwick](https://wordpress.org/support/users/misterwarwick/) * (@misterwarwick) * [17 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/lost-admin-username/#post-863932) * I am having a right royal time with my blog. I went to put in a post, and it tells me “invalid username”. well, I haven’t changed it at all, I have not adjusted any of the settings and did everything ABSOLUTELY correctly. * I come here to find out more, and it seems that phpMyAdmin is the only answer, as if I have the time for that. I decided to install blogging software *in order to save the time of doing it all in Dreamweaver and uploading it on my own*. * Yes, I am sure that if I fumble around with phpMyAdmin long enough I will eventually suss out what I need to do, ASSUMING it works as advertised on my operating system and browser. * It is one of the worlds SIMPLEST things to program up front and hook into the database : the classic “write a secret question” filter. But, no. Why would engineers ever do something that makes the life of nonEngineers simple. The arrogance and clipped brevity (bordering on Asperger’s like behaviour) only amplifies the problem. * Sigh. I suppose I’ll just rip it all out and go back to Dreamweaver or find some other blogging software that isn’t so recalcitrant or has better support. Heck– tying stuff in a text editor and uploading with an ftp client is clunky but at least it *always works* and doesn’t forget my name, and I don’t have to squander what few precious hours of free time I have figuring out the arcanities of phpMyAdmin. Good god what a waste of time. * Example, from the phpMyAdmin doc page: ` To manually create the file, simply use your text editor to create the file config.inc.php (you can copy config.sample. inc.php to get minimal configuration file) in the main (top-level) phpMyAdmin directory (the one that contains index.php). phpMyAdmin first loads libraries/ config.default.php and then overrides those values with anything found in config. inc.php. If the default value is okay for a particular setting, there is no need to include it in config.inc.php. You'll need a few directives to get going, a simple configuration may look like this: * * BWAHAHAHAAAA!!! * Yeah right. I have MUCH better things to do with my time than bother myself with that silliness. Could I do the above and all that follows? Yes. I could. But I don’t have the time, especially when this is to fix something that simply wasn’t my fault to begin with. * It’s like “OK, OK, so we destroyed your car and you can’t drive it. Sorry – go here: [http://www.eAutoRepair.net](http://www.eAutoRepair.net) and fix it yourself. You changed your shocks and even installed a manual choke? Cool – you can easily give it a new set of rings.” * The answer to that has been, and always will be: “Get stuffed”. * Sigh. * Too bad, though – WP seemed like such a good idea at the time… Viewing 14 replies - 1 through 14 (of 14 total) The topic ‘Lost Admin Username’ is closed to new replies. ## Tags * [lost username](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/lost-username/) * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/) * 14 replies * 8 participants * Last reply from: [misterwarwick](https://wordpress.org/support/users/misterwarwick/) * Last activity: [17 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/lost-admin-username/#post-863932) * Status: not resolved ## Topics ### Topics with no replies ### Non-support topics ### Resolved topics ### Unresolved topics ### All topics