For online security reasons, avoid installing WordPress sites using the username “admin”.For online security reasons, avoid installing WordPress sites using the username “admin”.
This is the default installation username for WordPress and one of the leading causes of brute force attacks on WordPress sites.
In this step-by-step tutorial for non-technical WordPress users, you will learn how to change your admin user name in WordPress to a more secure username.
Generally, with all new WordPress installations, the first user is also the admin of the website or blog.
The default WordPress username admin is not recommended, as it puts your website or blog at risk of being hacked …
Let’s change the WordPress admin username to a more secure user name.
There are a number of ways to access your “Profile” section after logging into WP:
Click on the Users > All Users page in your main menu …
Click on the username, or the Edit link when hovering over the username with your mouse …
Or, select Edit My Profile from the “Howdy, User” menu near the top-right hand corner of your Dashboard …
You can also go to your “Profile” page by selecting Users > Your Profile from the main menu.
What you will see in the Profile area, however, is that your username can’t be changed from the admin section …
So, how can you edit the username?
If your WordPress user name is “admin,” here’s the easiest way to change your user name without accessing your server and modifying files or your WordPress database:
First, let’s create a new user …
Next, create a different username, and assign the new user account the role of “Administrator”. Save your changes to update your settings …
A new admin user should now display in the Users area …
Log out of your WordPress admin area …
Log in with the new admin details for the user you have just created …
You should see your new user name details displayed in the “Howdy, User” panel …
Click on Users > All Users in the main menu …
You can now delete the old administrator account …
Select the option to assign all content owned by the old admin account and reassigned it to the new admin, then confirm the deletion of the old account …
You are now left with only the new Admin account, effectively changing your WordPress admin user name …
Another easy way to change the username is to use a plugin like the one shown below.
(Username changer)
Username Changer is a free WordPress plugin that lets you easily change your admin username (and allow other users to change their usernames too!)
To install the plugin from your WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins > Add Plugins and type in “username” into the Keyword search field (if you need help see our tutorial on installing WordPress plugins).
There are several plugins you can use to perform a similar function. Locate the Username Changer plugin and click on ‘Install Now’ …
(Install the plugin)
After installing the plugin, click the ‘Activate’ button …
(Activate the plugin)
After installing and activating the plugin, go to Settings > Username Changer …
(Settings – Username Changer menu)
This brings you to the ‘Settings’ screen.
Here, you can allow other user roles to change their usernames too (be careful about doing this!) …
(Username Changer Settings – Allowed Roles)
You can also configure email notifications (if you choose to allow users to change their usernames) …
(Username Changer Settings – Email notifications)
To change your username, go to Users > Your Profile …
(Users – Your Profile menu)
Scroll down to the ‘Name’ section and you will see a ‘Change Username’ link next to the grayed out username field. Click on this link to change your username …
(Click on ‘Change Username’ link)
The ‘Username’ field will become editable. Change your username and click the ‘Save Username’ button …
(Save your new username)
Changing your username will log you out of your WordPress admin area. You will need to log back into your WordPress site.
Click on the link to log back in …
(Click on the link to log back in)
Log back into your site with your new username (note: your password should remain the same) …
(Log back in with your new username)
Note: If you don’t click on the link to log back in you will find yourself logged out of your site …
(Changing your username will expire your session)
After logging back into your site, go to your User Profile section and you will see that your username has been changed.
(Username changed)
To learn more about this plugin, go here: Username Changer
Although this tutorial is mostly intended for non-technical WordPress users, let’s go one step further and show you how to change your WordPress user name inside the WordPress database.
All you need is access to your server’s control panel.
To learn how to search and replace content in your WordPress database without touching code or editing WordPress database tables, see the tutorial below:
In the example below, we’ll be working with cPanel …
cPanel management application
Log into your server control panel …
cPanel administration area
Find the “Databases” section and open up phpMyAdmin …
phpMyAdmin
Open up your WP database.
Note: If you have a number of databases set up on your domain, make sure that you choose the right one …
phpMyAdmin databases
Don’t worry about the technical-looking nature of the information on your screen.
Click on wp_users …
The user name is located in the “user login” column. To edit the field just double-click on the text you want to change …
Type in the new user name and click outside the edit box to update the field with the new username …
Log out of your server if you’re done and go back to your WordPress site. You may find that your session is expired. If so, log in again with your new administration username and password …
You should see that the user name is now updated. However, your site will probably still be displaying the old “nickname” …
To change the “nickname”, access your Users screen and click the Edit link below your user name …
You can also get to your Profile section by clicking on the Edit My Profile link in the “Howdy, User” panel …
Select a new name to display publicly from the drop down menu …
Note: You can also create a new Nickname in the Nickname field and it will then be available for selection in the Display name publicly as dropdown menu …
Click Update Profile to save your new settings …
You admin area is now updated with a new username and nickname …
Congratulations! Now you know how to change the WordPress admin username on your website.
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