How to Change Your Password in WordPress
Cynthia Bartz • September 20, 2016
How To Change Your Password In WordPress
This is a quick video on how to change your password in WordPress. Changing your user password in WordPress is a little goofy. In my opinion WordPress is in a place where they need to start making changes to the platform to make it more user friendly. It was originally created for developers and techy type people. And there are a lot of little quirks like this that still exist even though it’s now used by a lot of non-techy people.
[0:29]
In this video I’m going to show you two ways to change your password.
Method # 1
[0:35]
I am on the WordPress Admin login screen for my website. I’ve set up a dummy user, just for the purpose of this video. I’m going to go ahead and login with my username and password.
Now that I’ve logged in I can see the main Dashboard.
You are going to go all the way down to the bottom of the menu on the left to “Profile”.
In the Profile panel you have all of your personal settings, such as the color scheme for your editor, your name and how it’s displayed, and so on. We are not really concerned about all of this at the moment.
What we need is all the way down at the bottom here there is a section for “Account Management”
[1:39]
To change your password click on “generate password”, which is going to open a text field with a whole bunch of nonsense. The nonsense is a generated password that no human being will ever remember. It is super secure. So secure that even you can’t get in because you’ll never remember it.
[2:02]
So what we are going to do is just type a new password into this field.
Click into the text box, delete the password and type a new one in. If you don’t want people looking over your shoulder at your new password you can hit the “hide” button to the right.
So I’m going to hit this hide button and type in my new password.
[3:10]
Now that i’ve entered my new password I’m going to hit “update profile”, the blue button at the very bottom of the page. This is super important. If you don’t update your profile, your password will not update either. And you will have the same dumb, long, computer generated password.
That’s all you have to do for method one. So a short recap: login, go to “profile” on the left hand side, scroll down to the bottom, enter your new password, and hit update profile.
Method #2
[4:02]
Alrighty, for method number two we are going to pretend that we forgot the password. So, I have logged out of WordPress and I am back at the WordPress Admin login screen. I’m going to click this “lost your password” button underneath the login panel.
Enter my super secret email address.
Now I’m going to check my email and get the reset link.
[5:00]
Alright. Here we are again, with this crazy long silly password. While it’s secure, we are never going to remember it. AND we are not going to go writing this password down either. Don’t. Don’t do that.
We are going to do exactly the same thing we did in the first method. Enter whatever password you want and hit submit. Now I can click through and login with my new password.
[5:35]
That’s it. Essentially, with either method we just want to override the automatically generated password that wordpress provides us with. If you still have questions or feel totally lost feel free to hit me up on twitter @cbgraphicsatl or contact me through my website at www.cbgraphics.net/contact.
I’m going to be honest, figuring out how to change your wordpress password is obnoxious. It’s one of those things that should be simple and obvious (like every other login you’ve ever had). Instead WordPress has decided on a system that is super techy and not user friendly. Boo.
In this video I show you two methods to change your password then walk you through the whole process of changing your WordPress password.
Method #1: Under User Profile
For Method 1, first login to WordPress. Once you are logged in follow the steps below.
Change Your WordPress Password:
- Click on Profile or Users > Your Profile in the lefthand menu.
NOTE: if you are in the mobile app or mobile view you will need to open the menu at the top left corner first. - Scroll to the bottom of your profile settings.
- Click Generate Password.
- Type over the generated password with your desired password, really. It’s okay.
- Click Update Profile to save your new password.
- Enjoy a gif for conquering another part of WordPress!
Method #2: Say You Forgot Your Password
For Method 2, let’s pretend you forgot the password, even if you have it. This method is neither better nor worse than the first method, it’s just another option.
Change Your WordPress Password:
- Go to the login screen for the WordPress Admin.
- Enter the email associated with your account to generate the reset password link.
- Retrieve the “reset password” link from your email and click on it.
- Replace the generated password with your desired password. Again, just type over the password that’s displayed.
- Hit Submit.
- Enjoy a gif in celebration of figuring out how to change your wordpress password!
Summary
Regardless of the method you choose to replace your password, you will replace the automatically generated password (you will type over it) with your desired password. The automatically generated password is super secure, but pretty much impossible to remember. And, a super secure password does you no good if a) you can’t remember it or b) you write it down for the world to see. Watch the video for a step by step walk through of how to change your WordPress password.
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