Time needed: 5 minutes.

Change WordPress password via functions.php

  1. Login to your website via FTP

    Login to your website via FTP and go to your theme’s functions.php file and download it. for example:  /www/username/public_html/wp-content/themes/twentyfourteen/functions.php

  2. Edit functions.php

    2. On line 2, right after the first <?php line add this:
    wp_set_password(‘password’,’user’);

    In this example, we’re setting the password to password, and we’re updating it for the user user.

    Alternatively you could use this code for the admin user 1:
    wp_set_password( 'password', 1 );

  3. Upload the modified functions.php

    Upload the modified functions.php file to your /themes folder on the server.

  4. Login

    Login to your WordPress dashboard using the new password.

  5. Remove the line from functions.php

    Remove the wp_set_password line from the functions.php file, and re-upload it.

If this did not work for you, you can try renaming /wp-content/plugins

This will deactivate all plugins, until you rename the folder again to /plugins. Sometimes there are plugin conflicts.

You can also change your WordPress password via phpMyAdmin.