Create a WordPress Admin User via MySQL Database Using PHPMyAdmin

As a developer when you work with WordPress, you might find yourself in a situation like, not having the login credentials for the admin user, trying to recover a hacked WordPress site or you are locked out of your administrative account. If any of these happens or could be any other reason, you will need to create a new WordPress user (with an Administrator role) to regain access to the dashboard.

In this post, I will show you how you can manually create a WordPress Admin User via MySQL Database Using PHPMyAdmin.

Step 1: Access The MySQL Database of the Web Site

• Log into your cPanel/Control panel
• Click phpMyAdmin from Database section

Step 2: Find the WordPress Users table

• Once you are in PhpMyAdmin, from left-hand sidebar click on your specific WordPress database
• After the database information loads Find and click on the WP Users table (assuming database table prefix is set to "wp_").
• Next, click on the “insert” tab

Step 3: Inserting a New Record in the WP Users Table

Fill in the following fields to insert a new user record:

• ID – leave this field empty (it will be assigned automatically)
• user_login – insert the username that will be used to access the Admin area.
• user_pass – type a password for the username. Make sure MD5 is selected in the Function column.
• user_nicename – (optional, can be added later) type a URL-friendly name for the user.
• user_email – type the email associated with this account.
• user_url – (optional, can be added later) this would be the URL to your website.
• user_registered – set the date/time for when this user is registered.
• user_status – set this to 0.
• display_name –(optional, can be added later) put the name you like to display for this user on the site.
• Now Click on the Go Button (you should see a success message)

Click the "Browse" tab to verify that the new user record has been inserted correctly (see screenshot below).

Take a note of the newly created  "ID" field value (this ID field’s value will be use in the next step). Here the ID is 2.

Step 4: Inserting Newly created User Meta Values

In the final step, we will assign some user meta values to wp_usermeta table for the user account that we have we just created.

So, click on the wp_usermeta table and click on the Insert tab, just like we did in the previous step.We will add the following two meta value in this table.

• umeta_id – leave this field empty (it will be auto-generated)
• user_id – this will be the same ID of the user from the wp_users table, which is 2.
• meta_key – this should be wp_capabilities (assuming database table prefix is set to "wp_").
• meta_value – insert this: a:1:{s:13:"administrator";s:1:"1";}

Insert another row with the following information:

• umeta_id – leave this field empty (it will be auto-generated)
• user_id – this will be the same ID of the user from the wp_users table, which is 2.
• meta_key – this should be wp_user_level (assuming database table prefix is set to "wp_").
• meta_value – 10

Finally, click on the last Go button.

You have successfully created a new WordPress user with an Administrator role. Now you can visit your WordPress admin login page and use the specified username and password to log in.

Once you logged in, you must go to user edit screen to change the password of the newly created user or simply click on the Save button which will allow WordPress to go through and optimize the information.