How do you recover or reset your admin password?

If you know the email address that was used for the admin user, and you have made the "lost password" feature available on the front end, the simplest thing is to do is to use the "lost password" Front-end function.

If not, you will need access to the MySQL database. You have two choices, either add a new super administrator or change the password stored in the data base. To do this you need to go to phpMyAdmin (or use a similar tool) and manually edit the database. Before doing this back up your complete database.

From phpMyAdmin, you can run this SQL query to create a new user known as admin2.

INSERT INTO `jos_users` VALUES 
    (62, 'Administrator2', 'admin2', 'your-email@email.com', 'd1bb08b44909c038fe4e58e325180251:nHBaZ92t',  
    'Super Administrator', 0, 1, 25, '2005-09-28 00:00:00', '2005-09-28 00:00:00', '', '');
INSERT INTO `jos_core_acl_aro` VALUES (10,'users','62',0,'Administrator2',0);
INSERT INTO `jos_core_acl_groups_aro_map` VALUES (25,'',10);

You should change 62 in the above queries to something much higer than the number of users you have on your website else the queries will FAIL!

The password will be admin. Immediately log in and change this password and make any other changes to other admin users.

A second option is to change the password in the table for your admin user. The password is stored in the MySQL database jos_users table password column. (Change this for your table prefix if different.)

Open the table, find the row for your admin user, and then select that row for editing. The password must be hashed, you cannot simply enter text into this field.

Set the password to one of the known values shown below:

- password = "this is the MD5 and salted hashed password"
------------------------------------------------------
- admin  = 433903e0a9d6a712e00251e44d29bf87:UJ0b9J5fufL3FKfCc0TLsYJBh2PFULvT
- secret = d2064d358136996bd22421584a7cb33e:trd7TvKHx6dMeoMmBVxYmg0vuXEA4199
- OU812  = 5e3128b27a2c1f8eb53689f511c4ca9e:J584KAEv9d8VKwRGhb8ve7GdKoG7isMm

Or you can use this Secure Online Tool to create your own salted hashes:

Paste the hashed password into the field, save the change, and log-in using the new password. Immediately change your password to something more secure!