How Do I Recover a Lost Joomla Administrator Password
Lost passwords are the bane of my existence. Luckily, lots of places offer password recovery options. A Joomla 1.0.0 site for a long time client of mine wasn’t one of those sites. Given that the password is hashed, there’s no real way to recover it, but you can reset it; so, here’s how I reset my password:
- Try to guess password several times, no luck
- Look up username:
USE `joomla`; SELECT `id`, `username` FROM `tbl_users`;
- Try a few more times to guess the password, using the correct username (admin by default, not the case for me)
- Look up the hashed password:
USE `joomla`; SELECT `id`, `username`, `password` FROM `tbl_users`;
- Look up what type of hash Joomla uses. It looked like MD5 and it was.
- Generate a new password:
USE `joomla`; UPDATE `tbl_users` SET `password` = MD5('new_password_here') WHERE `id` = 'selected_id_here';
- You may now log in with your new_password_here