If you forget your Joomla Administrator password, you’re in big trouble. The following procedure provides a relatively easy way to create a new password.
Note: This procedure requires that you have access to phpMyAdmin.
- Access your Joomla database using phpMyAdmin. You can usually find a link to phpMyAdmin in your web hosting control panel.
phpMyAdmin is a tool that makes is easy to edit your database.
- From the list of tables on the left, click the jos_userstable.Note: It’s possible that the table prefix will be different; for example, if you are using Joomla 1.7, it might be j17_users.
- Find the user whose password you want to change and click Edit.
- In the passwordfield, delete the text that is there (it will be an alpha numerical string) and enter a new password. Make sure you write it down because you won’t be able to read it later.
- In the Function list, select MD5. The MD5function encrypts the password.Note: If your version of phpMyAdmin does not have the MD5 function, go to the following url to generate an MD5 password: http://www.miraclesalad.com/webtools/md5.php or search Google for MD5 and you will find several MD5 password generators.
- Click the Go button under the last field.
phpMyAdmin encrypts and saves the new password. Now you can log in using the new password.
If you need to change the password later, you can do it from the Joomla Administrator screen.