Like most systems that require password authentication, Wordpress will help you out if you forget your password. Clicking the “lost your password” link at the login page will take you through a sequence of steps that ultimately sends a new password to the email address associated with your Wordpress account.

But what if your Wordpress installation can’t send email? This is the case with my development server, so recently when I lost the password I had to do a manual reset in the Wordpress database using phpMyAdmin. Here are the steps:

1. Start phpMyAdmin
2. Select your Wordpress database in the sidebar on the left
3. Select the “wp-users” table in the sidebar on the left
4. Select the “Browse” tab at the top of the page
5. Click the pencil icon to edit the admin entry
6. Enter a new password in the “Value” field (don’t press “Go” yet)
7. Set the “Function” field to “MD5″
8. Press the “Go” button

Done. Step 7 is the tricky one. MD5 is the password encryption that Wordpress uses in order to prevent people from seeing the passwords if they somehow gain access to your database.