Ask The Admin

A few days ago I was trying to set up Wordpress on my domain and since it's in Hungarian - Fantastico my webhost's auto-installer couldn't quite cope with it. I needed to install it manually.

At the end of the process I got a random password. Of course the inevitable happened. I forgot to change it and logged off.

I was left with a perfectly set up blog ready for me, but I was left to stare hopelessly at the login screen like it was written in another language.



During my morning browsing I stumbled on to a script called emergency.php, which I found over at village-idiot.org. All you need is the ability to upload files to your site and to know the name of the administrator (usually admin) and you can reset the password. I know some of you are gasping...

But please use this AtA knowlege only for good! With that being said here is the uber simple walk through:

Just upload the file to the directory containing wp-config.php and run the script from your browser by going to http://www.myblog.com/emergency.php obviously replacing myblog.com with your actual sites name.

You can then enter the user name and the new password and it will, by magic, be reset. After you're done though, don't forget to delete the file, since anyone could run the script and reset your password!

Daniel