How to: Change your WordPress default administrator username

Reasons to change the default administrator username

In one of our first blog posts, we wrote about ways of securing a WordPress site and preventing it from being hacked. One of the tips mentioned was changing the WordPress default admin username.

You see, most of the earlier WordPress installations were forced to use the “admin” name for the default administrator user role, so this made their WP sites vulnerable to brute-force attacks since the attacker already knew the username and had to guess or bruteforce the password and then he would be able to access your WordPress site dashboard like a boss.

From version 3.0 and on WordPress allows you to change the administrator username to a different one than the default “admin”. There are still though many WP installations which were setup prior v.3.0 or their webmasters didn’t pay special attention to this feature and used the default administrator name as the username.

Just like our last blog post, where we wrote a simple guide showing how you can change your WordPress login URL through the help of the plugin, in this guide, we are going to recommend some plugins and feature one of them that can help you change the administrator username without having to mess with file and database editing. When done, your chosen plugin can be safely removed from your site’s plugin list, so there won’t be any additional noise in your WP setup.

Plugins that can help you edit the default administrator username

Our guide on how to change your WordPress admin username

Follow our 6 Step Guide and change your administrator username, at the end of the guide you will find a video tutorial as well.

Step 1: Install and activate the WP Edit Username WordPress plugin by Sajjad Hossain Sagor

You need to scroll the page a bit to find the WP Edit Username plugin.

Step 2: Visit your Dashboard user page

Select the administrator username you want to change. Remember that you can change any other username for any subscriber, contributor, author, or editor.

Step 3: Select the edit username option

Find the “username” field(it’s under the “Name” section of the page) and select the edit button.

Step 4: Insert your new administrator username and update

In the new pop-up window, enter your new administrator username(in our example, it’s “wpnewusername”) and select the “Update Username” option.

Step 5: Save your new administrator username

Wait for the update confirmation and save the account details.

Step 6: Log in with your new administrator username

Once you update your account, you will be automatically logged off. Then, you can try to log in using your new admin account username.

Update

We’ve created a new video tutorial for Changing your WordPress Default Admin Username; check it out!

Let us know if you have any questions or comments!