2 Easy Methods to Change WordPress Admin Username

One of the tips to secure your WordPress site is to avoid using the standard admin username as super user login.

You can actually specify a unique username if you’re doing the famous 5-minute manual installation. But if you have installed the WordPress using a script such as fantastico, all the settings will be default, including the admin username.

In this case, you need to change it manually after the installation.

In this post, you will learn 2 ways of how to change the default admin username to something unique on your WordPress site.

Creating a new administrative username.

In summary, you will first create a new unique administrative username, and delete the standard admin username after that.

1. On WordPress Dashboard, go to Users > Add New.
2. Enter a unique username, email, password and select Administrator from the Role’s drop down menu, follow by clicking the Add New User button.
3. You can now logout and login your blog using the newly created username.
4. On WordPress Dashboard, go to Users > All users.
5. Tick the checkbox of admin username, select delete from the drop-down menu and click Apply.
6. If there are posts link to the admin username, you will be asked on how to deal with these posts. Select Attribute all posts and links to the new username and click Confirm Deletion.
7. Done, the admin username has been removed.

Using phpMyAdmin

Note: If you’re not familiar with cPanel or phpMyAdmin, I would advise you not to use this method.

1. Login to the cPanel of your web host.
2. On the cPanel page, scroll down to Databases section and click the phpMyAdmin.
3. On the phpMyAdmin page, click the database that belongs to your WordPress blog.
4. Now you will see a list of tables in this database, click the wp_users, a table that stores all user login information.
5. Now, look for the record with admin in the user_login column and then click the Edit link.
6. Change the admin to whatever you wish (recommended to use alphanumeric) and click the Go button at the bottom.
7. You’re done. Let’s try login using  the new username.