WordPress : Change Admin Login Name

Long time since I wrote anything for WordPress, my favorite blog + simple CMS platform.

In this article, I’ll guide you on how you could change your default administrator “admin” to something else. 🙂

Why Should You Do It

Basically it’s a simple step to improve security. Even if people know your probable password, they now have to figure out your username as it’s no longer “admin“.

Before you proceed – this tutorial is not applicable on wordpress hosted blogs i.e. you have a site hosted at wordpress.com.

Step 1

Log in to your phpmyadmin – it’s the most commonly installed database administration tool on any web-hosting package. Whether you’re using DirectAdmin or Cpanel as your hosting package administration interface, it’s there. If you’re using some others like HELM or PLESK, I’m not sure so you’ll need assistance from your hosting company.

Anyway this i what you’ll be looking at. If it’s not there, just click on the database name.

Database are made of many tables, and in each table there are records. For this exercise, we’ll be modifying an entry on the table “wp_users“.

Step 2

Click on the “wp_users” link on the left, you’ll see an interface like the one here, just click on the PENCIL icon there and it’ll bring you to the EDIT page.

*I will not be responsible over anything that goes wrong. So please, do yourself a favor by not clicking on any thing that is an X.

Step 3

After doing so you’ll be presented with another interface but don’t be afraid, brother goldfries is here to help you through. Just look at the image below.

Notice there’s one line with “user_login” as title and the word “admin” is in the input box on the right.

All you need to do, is change the name to whatever you want (within 60 characters, not like you’re going to use 60 characters anyway) and click on the GO button at the bottom when you’re done.

There ya have it!