Lost in WordPress Disaster?

CMS & WordPress
1

Hello everyone,
I am trying to help someone out who was left in the dark with their website. I am trying to find the log in information for their website. I found the username and password with the help of their hosting company in the manage/wordpress information. However, when I use this login username and password into the website/wp-login.php it does not accept it. This is strange because their hosting website has this in their database. What makes things worse, is, it does not recognize the email of this person in order to change the username or password. So I have to figure out how to

  1. Change the email used in this Wordpress website. I don’t feel comfortable going into the database…
  2. Change the username and password…

Any help in how to get started would be a comfort right now. :smile:

2

Does WP have a lost password/reset routine? If id does change the super admin email address in the Db to yours and do the lost password reset?

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3

I know you said you don’t feel comfortable touching the database but I know of no other way around this issue. I agree that you need to go into the database and change the email address if you want to use the reset password feature. You could also change the password in the database instead if you are feeling really brave.

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4

Thanks. We are using GoDaddy. Any suggestions on how to go about doing it? It is just one line of php code to change for the email?

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5

Well I would go directly into the database, but you need to be very careful. Because you are wanting to reset the password of the admin user, go to the database table wp_users (or there may be a different prefix) and change the email address there.

The admin email address in the wp_options table is used more for notifying the website administrator of WordPress core updates, and other administrative items. It may not necessarily be the same person as the one who logs in to the dashboard as admin.

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6

Might it be better to create a temporary second Admin account instead of messing with the only Admin account?

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7

@Mittineague how to do that when they can’t log in?

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8

The “site” as far as the pages doesn’t necessarily need to be logged in to.
But, yes, being able to connect to the database would be necessary.

It might be the only thing left to do is start over using the last good back-ups.

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9

I got into the ftp files. Is the database found there?

10

No. Those are just the theme and core files for WordPress. To get to the database, you need to go in through the hosting account.

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11

It doesn’t sound like a file is the cause of the problem.
But it might be worth looking into the wp-config.php file especially if there were changes made to it around the time the problem started.

12

This is very frustrating. :frowning: I can’t get into the database.

13

Have you searched Google as it has lots of posts on how to reset the admin although they need you to modify the database. Do you have access to the cpanel or similar?

14

Hi,
When I go to wordpress database it does not let me log in. Does the database take the same username and password as wordpress does? That makes no sense otherwise I could get into wordpress. lol My bad. lol

15

If you have access to the websites cpanel or something similar you can use phpmyadmin.

16

Is downloading the FTP files as a form of backup safe? In the worst case scenario?

17

GoDaddy sent into the phpmyadmin. For some reason I couldn’t do it. The gave it a new email so I reset the email.

1 Like
18

If this hasn’t been resolved yet, you want to log in to the cPanel or control panel of the domain and find the MySQL database listings. Identify the database that wordpress is on - listed as ‘DB’ in the wp-config.php - and access the phpmyadmin for that database. Select wp_users from the left panel and the ‘Browse’ tab at the top of the user listings. Below the first table is a list of user names and random characters masking the password. Select ‘Edit’ next to the user_login in question. A new table will appear that lists the username and password in the Value column. Change the user_login, user_pass, and/or user_email to whatever you need to. In the Function column, be sure to select MD5 from the dropdown menu in the user_pass row. Options at the bottom should say Save and then Go back to previous page. Leave those as the defaults and select Go.

This should change your user, pass, and email as needed and you should be able to log on to your wordpress site. Detailed instructions are on this page:

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