Changing WordPress Multisite Admin Username

We use an outside service to periodically scan our sites for vulnerabilities. Recently, we were advised that one of our WordPress multisite installations uses the default “admin” for the SuperAdmin username.

I actually knew about that, but, as anyone who manages WordPress sites knows, you can’t change your username once set. For a while, I didn’t worry about it, but this seemed to be the last little vulnerability I needed to address on the list, so I decided to tackle it.

Fortunately, I was able to find a solution by searching the web. Auroral is a blog in the UK, and they spell it out quite easily. You can view their solution, or, for expediency of time, here’s the solution:

1. Using phpMyAdmin, or whatever database tool you prefer (I use NaviCat), log into your database.
2. Find your [wp]_users table ([wp] would be whatever prefix you used when you set up your database).
3. Find the row in the table where admin is the value in the user_login column.
4. Change admin to whatever value you prefer. Your new name must not contain spaces.
5. Change the value in the user_nicename column to match the same value.
6. Commit these changes.
7. Find the [wp]_sitemeta table.
   
8. Find the row with site_admins for the meta-data value. You should see something that looks like this:

   a:1:{i:0;s:5:"admin";}

9. Change admin to your new administrator name — the same you entered in step 4, above.
10. Change the 5 to the count of characters in your new administrator name. For example, if your new user name is “cooldude,” then the count would be 8. Therefore, this value should read:

    a:1:{i:0;s:8:"cooldude";}

11. Commit this change.

Of course, test and re-test.

Bret Williams

Bret is the a co-founder and the Managing Partner of novusweb®. He is also author of several books on Magento and e-commerce and is sought as a speaker and trainer. Bret has been crafting internet innovations since 1995.