So, you’re on your way to write you latest blog masterpiece, but are shocked to find out that you can no longer log in to your WordPress blog. The password isn’t “password” like you had remembered, and the piece of paper that you wrote it on was washed with your pants last week. What can you do?
The easiest way to reset your password is with the “Lost your password?” link under your blog’s log in form. This will send a password reset email to the email address in your user profile, so be sure to keep that up to date.
What if the email never arrives, or you’ve lost access to the email address in question? Fortunately, there are plenty of alternative ways to reset your password covered in this Codex article. Most hosting providers offer phpMyAdmin via their control panel, and I have often found the phpMyAdmin method to be the easiest (excluding the “Lost your password?” link, of course).
If you’re having trouble with any of these, the volunteers in the WordPress Support Forums are more than happy to guide you down the right path.
If I was going into the database because my email address was defunct, I’d change the admin email rather than the password. If you change the password in the database you’re going to have to update the email anyway once you’re logged in, and editing one setting seems more efficient than changing two.