We all know that WordPress is the most commonly used blogging platform as it offers an unlimited number of features and is free. The only big disadvantage that it possess is the default username that it automatically chooses for administrators while installation. From the security point of view, it is not recommended to keep the administrator username as “admin”. However, WordPress 3.0 (coming up in a few days) solves this problem, but this tutorial might still be helpful to those who use the older version of WordPress. There are a couple of ways which can be used to change the “admin” username.

NOTE: I’ll be using the WordPress installation on my localhost for this tutorial.

1. phpMyAdmin – Changing SQL databases

For those who don’t want to use phpMyAdmin, then you may skip reading this part and may use the 2nd method described in this tutorial.

We all know that WordPress stores everything in its SQL databases. So all we need to do is to change the entry for username in the database. In this part we will be using phpMyAdmin to edit the SQL database for WordPress.

Once you login to phpMyAdmin, you will see the following screen:

Notice that all the databases being used on your website are listed in the sidebar to the left. Click on the database you are using for your blog.

After you click on the database name your blog uses, you will see a list of SQL tables inside the database:

If you use plugins and themes and other 3rd party stuff on your WordPress installation, you’ll probably have more tables than in the screenshot above. Now navigate to the wp_users (For most blogs, the prefix is usually “wp” but it can vary for some people who changed it during installation)

and click on the Browse. The icon of browse looks like the screenshot below:

Once you open the table, you’ll see something as in the screenshot below:

Your output may vary from the one shown above as the number of entries inside “wp_users” depends on the number of registered users on your wordpress website/blog. Now scroll down to the ID which says user_login as admin. Once there click on edit button, the edit button will appear as a pencil logo which is shown below:

You’ll now see a list of entries (may seem familiar to you – as you might have changed some of these – like email & url & nicename or the nickname) for the user admin (the default administrator user. Now make changes according to the screenshot below:

You might have noticed some markings on the screenshot above. These have been explained in detail below:

1. The value in the black-rectangle is the your default Username (user_login). I changed the value to my name.
2. The values in the purple-rectangles can be changed to whatever you want. “user_nicename” is your nickname and this is the one which is seen in posts; “user_email” is the email you used to register your user (admin in this case); “user_url” is your website’s url.
3. The values in the red-rectangles should not be changed as they may cause some serious issues/problems. “user_pass” is your password but it is displayed in an encrypted form so don’t change it to anything. If you want to change your password then use the WordPress Admin Panel.

After you complete doing the additions and subtractions to this table then click on the GO button on the bottom right corner. This will save your changed settings and then you can try logging in to your wordpress installation with the new username.

2. WordPress Username change plugin

There are many plugins available in the WordPress plugins directory which allow users to change their usernames. The most used plugin is the WPVN – Username Changer. It allows you to change the level the user must be to change their username. This plugin allows all types of users on your WordPress installation to change their usernames to anything they desire. You may use the URL below to open the plugins homepage in the WordPress Plugin directory.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wpvn-username-changer/

This is a screenshot of the “Change Username” section under Users in your WordPress Admin Panel. The Settings section above are only displayed for the website/blog administrators and not for every user.

So, we discussed the two most used and easy ways of changing “admin” usernames in WordPress. That’s all for this tutorial!

If you have any questions or suggestions then feel free to comment