Changing SuperAdmin Name

  • BizDev Results

    (@candeos)


    13 years, 1 month ago

    With the recent flurry of Brute Force attacks on WordPress, one of the recommendations is to change the administrator name from admin to something else.

    There seems to be 3 schools of thought. Create a new user, grant it superadmin priveleges and then delete the “admin” superadmin

    The other is to ake changes to a couple of places in the table to change the actual name of the existing user from admin to something else.

    It is a little concerning to go in and modify the database. But if you delete the initial superuser, “admin” does this create other problems?

    Thanks in advance for your help!

    Dave

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    🏳️‍🌈 Advisor and Activist

    13 years, 1 month ago

    It’s a little harder to do in Multisite, but personally the only problem I had was when the admin account was the author of posts. It’s just a PITA to re-associate all the posts.

    Thread Starter BizDev Results

    (@candeos)

    13 years, 1 month ago

    Thanks for the feedback. What do you think is better? Just create a new superuser and delete the original one, or do I change the name in the database table…

    Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    🏳️‍🌈 Advisor and Activist

    13 years, 1 month ago

    Making a new super admin is easier. I know on 3.6-beta, if I delete a user isn’t network, I can reassociate all posts in all sites on the delete screen. I can’t remember if that’s the case on 3.5 …

    Renaming the admin user means you have to also edit the DB manually.

    Mike Price

    (@mikeprice)

    13 years, 1 month ago

    Better WP Security is something I mentioned in another post to someone else and it works like a charm on Multisite and does what you are trying to do with a click of a button. If you don’t need the rest of the plugin’s functions you can deactivate it after making the change of the admin username.

    Mike

    sontru

    (@sontru)

    13 years, 1 month ago

    I would change the login name directly in the database. If this is not possible or a PITA, then forcing strong passwords on admin accounts.

    Can anyone recommend a good double password challenge plugin?

    Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    🏳️‍🌈 Advisor and Activist

    13 years, 1 month ago

    If you want to do it in the DB, you have to do this:

    Edit the wp_users DB and change the name to (for example) doctorwho

    Then edit the site_admins option in the wp_options table to be: a:1:{i:0;s:9:"doctorwho";}

    Where ‘doctorwho’ is the name of the super user and 9 is the character length of the name.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

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