For new webmasters, setting up WordPress the first time may not be the end of the story. Sometimes you make changes that may not be right and you’d like to undo them. Like choosing the wrong account name for the WordPress administrator. When you’re setting up WordPress for the first time, you’re given an opportunity to create an administrative account name. This name will be the default username for the account. When you create it, it gets added to the database and you can not change it from the WordPress dashboard. If you made a mistake choosing the account name, you will have to change the name from the WordPress database, and this is where cPanel comes into play. Since most new users are going to be managing their websites and blogs with help of a hosting provider, most times, these host providers allow users to use cPanel and other hosting tools to manage their websites. cPanel comes with a database management tool called phpMyAdmin. One can use this tool to manage MySQL databases. If you need to change your WordPress username, you will certainly use phpMyAdmin to do it.

Accessing phpMyAdmin from cPanel

To access phpMyAdmin from cPanel, log on to your cPanel account (your host provider should make this available to you). Then in the Databases section, select phpMyAdmin as shown in the image below

Changing WordPress Username

When phpMyAdmin opens, it should automatically show a list of databases on the left. Select and expand the database WordPress is using. The expanded database displays all the tables in the database. Next, select the wp_users table to show a list of current WordPress users as shown in the image below Then click the Edit link of the account you wish to edit. When the table opens, change the value for the column ID user_nicename to what the username to be and save your changes. When you’re done, go to your WordPress admin page and attempt to log on with the new username and the same password and it should work. This is how one changes a WordPress username using phpMyAdmin. Enjoy! You may also like this post: