Change the Admin Username in WordPress

Since the recent botnet attack on WordPress we've been asked a lot of times how to change the WordPress admin user to something else (so a hacker would have to guess the username as well as your password rather than being halfway there already!). Here's how...
  1. Login to your WordPress installation using your admin account.
  2. Click on "Add new" in the "Users" menu.
  3. Fill in the form with the details of your new admin user:
    • You will need to use a different email address to your current admin user.
    • Make sure you set administrator as the role.
    • Choose a username that is not similar to your blog name or company name.
    • Choose a hard to guess password, we use strongpasswordgenerator.com to generate our passwords.
  4. Click "Add User".
  5. Logout of WordPress.
  6. Login to WordPress as your new admin user.
  7. Click on "Users" in the "Users" menu.
  8. Move your mouse over the admin username. You should see links for "Edit" and "Delete" appear below the admin username. Click on "Delete"
  9. Select "Attribute all posts and links to" and then select your new username from the drop-down list. If you don't do this all your old posts will be deleted!!
That's it, you've changed your WordPress username so a hacker would need two pieces of information to get into your site.

If you would like us to do this for your please contact support.
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