It’s scenario time again . Just today, I was given the task to aid someone with his Joomla website. The challenge: The previous webmaster was being fired. One of these reasons was that he made a total mess of the password administation (And he was working for other “customers” during work hours. And, he’s quite incompetent; but that was not a reason for my customer to fire him).
To make a long, complicated story short: I needed a Super Admin password, and there was no option to get it from anyone. So, I had to mess around in the database.
Here’s the tale of how I changed the password of the Super Admin.
1. First of all, I registered an account for myself.
2. Second of all, I logged on to the mysql server; and went to the table jos_users (jos might be something else in your case).
3. I looked up my user; and edited the record. I then copied my hashed password.
4. I looked up the Super Administrator account, and edited it. I replaced his hashed password with mine, and saved the change.
5. That’s all there is to it. I could now log in as the Super Administrator, using my password.
Alternative solution: [With thanks to this blog post]: If you can’t register a new account (it happens more than you think); and / or aren’t afraid of executing a SQL command, try this alternative:
1. Again, log in to the mysql server.
2. Select the database (if necessary) and execute the following SQL statement:
UPDATE `jos_users` SET `password` = MD5( ‘new password’ ) WHERE `jos_users`.`username` = "admin";
Obviously, you’ll want to replace new password with what you actually want to use as your new password.