How to change your WordPress password in under a minute

22 September 2026

When did you last change your WordPress password? For a lot of the businesses we work with, the honest answer is “when the site was built”. Same password, years later, and often shared along the way with a freelancer, a former colleague or a marketing agency that’s long since moved on.

The good news is that it’s a quick fix. WordPress will even generate a strong password for you, and there’s a button that logs out every other device at the same time, so the old password stops working everywhere. Here’s how to change your WordPress password, and what to do if you can’t get in at all.

Watch the walkthrough

We’ve put together a short video showing the whole process from start to finish. If you’d rather read the steps, they’re written out below.

Why it’s worth changing your WordPress password

Your WordPress login is the front door to your website. Anyone with an administrator password can change pages, install plugins, add users or take the whole site offline. Most of the time nobody’s trying, but automated bots test login pages around the clock, and passwords turn up in data breaches from completely unrelated sites more often than you’d think.

There are three situations where we’d always recommend changing it straight away. Someone who had the password has left the business or stopped working with you. You’ve reused the same password on another site that’s had a breach. Or the password was set a long time ago and it’s short, guessable or based on the company name. If any of those ring a bell, the steps below take about a minute.

How to change your WordPress password: step by step

You’ll need to be logged in to your site to follow these steps. Any user can change their own password this way, whatever their role. If you’re locked out, skip to the forgotten password section further down.

Steps

Step 1. Open your profile

In the top right corner of the WordPress dashboard you’ll see “Hi” followed by your name. Hover over that and click “Edit Profile”. You can also get to the same page from Users in the left sidebar, then Profile.

Step 2. Scroll to Account Management

There’s a lot on the profile page, including your name, contact details and colour scheme options. Ignore all of it for now and scroll down until you reach a section called “Account Management”.

Step 3: Click Set New Password

Click the “Set New Password” button. WordPress doesn’t just give you an empty box. It generates a long, random, strong password right there in the field, and you’ll see a green “Strong” bar underneath it.

Step 4: Use the generated password, or choose your own

If you use a password manager such as 1Password, Bitwarden or the one built into your browser, our advice is to keep the generated password and let the manager remember it. You’ll never have to type it, and it’s far stronger than anything you’d come up with yourself.

If you’d rather choose your own, delete what’s there and type yours in. Keep an eye on the strength bar. If it turns red, WordPress will ask you to tick a box confirming you want to use a weak password. If you see that box, take it as a nudge to pick something longer. Three or four unrelated words with a number and a symbol mixed in is easy to remember and very hard to guess.

Step 5: Log out everywhere else

This is the step most people miss. Just under the password field there’s a section called “Sessions” with a button labelled “Log Out Everywhere Else”. If the reason you’re changing your password is that someone else might have had it, click this too. It ends every other login on your account, on every device, so the new password becomes the only way in.

If the button is greyed out with the message “You are only logged in at this location”, that just means there’s nothing to log out. You’re the only active session.

Step 6: Click Update Profile

Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the blue “Update Profile” button. This is the one that catches people out. Nothing is saved until you click it, so if you change the password and then navigate away, nothing has actually changed. You’ll see a “Profile updated” message at the top of the page when it’s done.

That’s it. Next time you log in, use the new password and you’re in.

Forgotten your WordPress password?

If you can’t log in at all, you don’t need to change your password from inside the dashboard. Go to your site’s login page, which is usually your domain followed by /wp-login.php, and click the “Lost your password?” link underneath the form. Enter your username or the email address on your account and WordPress will email you a link to set a new one.

A few things to check if the email doesn’t arrive. Look in your junk or spam folder first, as password reset emails land there more often than you’d expect. Make sure you’re using the email address that’s actually on your WordPress account, which might be an old one if the site was set up a while ago. And the link only works for a limited time, so use it as soon as it comes through.

If nothing arrives after a few minutes, an administrator on the site can set a new password for you from Users in the dashboard. If you’re the only administrator and you’re locked out, whoever looks after your website or hosting can usually reset it from the server side. That’s the kind of thing we sort out for our clients fairly regularly, so it’s never a lost cause.

One minute well spent

Changing your WordPress password isn’t glamorous, but it’s one of the simplest things you can do to keep your site safe, and it takes less time than making a cup of tea. If you want to go a step further, pairing a strong password with two-factor authentication makes your login very hard to crack even if the password does leak.

If you’d like a hand with any of this, or you’d rather someone just took care of keeping your site secure and up to date, we’re always happy to chat. Have a look at our WordPress support page or drop us a line.

Written by James Hofton + Reviewed by Jane Comar

Last updated: September 22, 2026

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