How-to · Beginner · 5–15 minutes
How to Reset Your WordPress Password
Everything you need to get back into wp-admin through whichever legitimate door is still open — the steps in order, the snag to watch, and the tip our support desk gives everybody.
Straight answer first
In a line: get back into wp-admin through whichever legitimate door is still open — a beginner-level task that takes 5–15 minutes.
Below you get the exact steps, the classic snag, and a tip from the support desk. Where our platform handles a step for you, the guide says so rather than making you do the robot's work.
Written by the Hosting Seller staff · Checked 1 August 2026
Beginner
Difficulty level
5–15 minutes
Time to allow
5
Stages
24/7
Help at any hour
This guide assumes no expertise at all — just a hosting account, a browser and 5–15 minutes of attention. Every instruction works on our platform exactly as written, and carries over to any standard cPanel host.
Rule of the road: read the snag section before you begin rather than after. It is harvested from the tickets of people who did it the other way round.
The shape of the work
Here is the route in full: try the ordinary way first, use phpmyadmin when the email fails, or do it with wp-cli, fix whatever stopped the email arriving and tighten up once you're in.
No stage needs code or a terminal unless the guide says so outright, and where it does, the exact commands are printed. The full step-by-step sits below; the sections around it give the context that makes it stick.
Where this goes wrong, and how not to
Forgetting the MD5 dropdown in phpMyAdmin. Pasting a plain password without choosing the hash function stores something WordPress cannot use, so the lockout continues with an extra layer of confusion on top.
It is worth learning because it is not some rare edge case — it is the single most common reason this task turns into a support ticket. Knowing it up front turns the whole job from risky into routine.
The trick worth borrowing
The database route also rescues a site whose admin email address has been changed by somebody else. You are editing identity at the storage layer, underneath whatever an attacker altered in the dashboard.
It costs a minute now and pays that back every time the job comes round again — which, like most hosting jobs, it certainly will.
What you can skip on a Hosting Seller plan
Several steps in this guide exist only because hosting historically made you do them. On our plans SSL issues itself, backups run daily without being asked, and one-click installers replace the manual setup entirely. What is left is the part that is genuinely yours.
Stuck halfway through at an odd hour? That is exactly what round-the-clock human support is for — tell us where you are in this guide and we will pick it up from there.
The hosting this guide is written against
Tutorials age badly when they are written against imaginary hosting. These are written against ours: the same panel, the same installer and the same defaults you will meet.
Mailboxes on your own domain are part of the plan, never an add-on sold back to you at checkout.
- Step by step, tested exactly as printed
- The snag flagged before you reach it
- The dull steps are already automated
- People on hand at any hour if you stall
Why Hosting Seller
On every plan, as standard
Scoped honestly
Get back into wp-admin through whichever legitimate door is still open is a beginner-level task — this guide budgets 5–15 minutes and says which steps the platform absorbs.
Help on the counter
Stuck on step three at midnight? Support answers at any hour, mid-guide included.
Works exactly as written
Every step tested on the platform we run — no 'your host may differ' hand-waving anywhere.
No jargon toll
Terms are explained where they appear or linked to the glossary — nothing assumes you already know.
Written from real tickets
Our guides come off the support desk, so the snags flagged here are the ones people genuinely hit.
The undo is always named
Where a step could bite, the guide says so and tells you how to put it back again.
First Steps
From choosing to live
- 1
Try the ordinary way first
The 'Lost your password?' link on the login screen emails you a reset link. Check the spam folder and give it a few minutes before deciding it has not worked.
- 2
Use phpMyAdmin when the email fails
In cPanel, open the site's database and find the wp_users table. Edit your own row's user_pass field, choose MD5 from the function dropdown, and type the new password in the value box.
- 3
Or do it with WP-CLI
Over SSH, run wp user update your_username --user_pass='newpassword'. It is the quickest route by a distance if you are already comfortable at a terminal.
- 4
Fix whatever stopped the email arriving
Reset emails that never arrive mean the site cannot send mail reliably. Install an SMTP plugin so the next reset — and every contact form notification — actually lands in an inbox.
- 5
Tighten up once you're in
Set a unique password from a password manager, switch two-factor on, and while access is on your mind, look at who else holds an administrator account on the site.
In the Box
Packed with every plan
- A domain free for year one when you order annually
- Webmail in the browser plus IMAP, POP and SMTP for your own client
- Site migration done for you by our staff, at no charge
- A free SSL certificate on every plan, reissued before it lapses
- WebP image optimisation built in and costing nothing
- SSH, Git and Composer on the plans built for developers
- cPanel, the panel the rest of the trade already knows
- A backup taken daily, with restores you run yourself
- Real people on the counter, every hour of every day
- The renewal price printed on the tag matches the order price
Across the Counter
The questions we get asked most
The reset emails never turn up — what is going wrong?
WordPress sends through PHP by default, and inbox providers trust that less every year. An SMTP plugin routing mail through an authenticated mailbox fixes password resets, form notifications and order confirmations all in one go.
Could somebody else turn these database tricks against me?
Only with access to your hosting account, which is why the hosting login — strong password, two-factor — is the perimeter that actually matters. Database resets are a recovery route for owners, not a way in for strangers.
How quickly can I be up and running?
Minutes, not days. The account opens the moment the order clears, the domain — free for year one on annual plans — attaches straight away, and the one-click installer puts WordPress or any of 400+ applications on the page before you leave your chair. Already have a site elsewhere? Hand it over and we move it free, usually inside a day.
Are backups included, and can I put one back myself?
A backup is taken daily on every plan, and the restore is yours to run from the panel in minutes — files, databases or both, at three in the morning without waiting on a ticket. Keeping your own copy offsite as well is never a bad habit, and nothing here stops you.
Who actually runs the company?
Hosting Seller is a trading name of Bohzo Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales — a real business with a public record and terms published under English law. Looking that up is worth doing about any host before you hand over your domain.
Which control panel comes with the account?
cPanel, which the whole trade already knows. That means every tutorial online matches what you see, your backups restore onto any cPanel host anywhere, and what you learn here stays useful for life. Plesk and DirectAdmin are stocked on specific plans for anyone who prefers them.
What uptime do you commit to, and who is watching?
We commit to 99.9% uptime and watch it continuously. That figure is an operational target rather than a poster line, and the alerting behind it usually has an engineer on a problem before the first customer notices anything is wrong.
Read next
How to Hide the WordPress Login Page
Move wp-login away from the address every bot on earth already knows — intermediate level, about 15 minutes.
How to Secure Your Email Account
Protect the one account that can reset every other account you own — beginner level, about 30 minutes.
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