Why and How To Change the Default Username on WordPress?

The first line of defense for any WordPress website or any website is the login page. If your login page is full of vulnerabilities, then you are putting security of your website at stake. DO you know no hacker himself hacks the website, they all are hacked by hacker-bots or automated malicious softwares. Though Simple WordPress theme is in trend today, but that doesn’t means that it requires less security. Each and every theme has to be protected especially the login page. Importance of Login Page Login page grants the accessibility to your entire website. One right username-password guess and complete website may be ruined as all internal functionality get exposed. You can’t even imagine the worst case scenario. Your website may be used in various cyber crimes or Man in the Middle attacks. Keeping standard usernames and passwords can make the guessing work much more easier to the bots via dictionary attacks or Brute Force. Why username is important too? Suppose you keep the username as it is which is “admin” and just change the password. This means you are giving way to the hacker bots to perform less work and your site may be hacked in less time. But keeping a strong and long username increases the time and work required by hacker bots for attempting the guesswork. Some points to consider 1. Change your default username in the development phase itself. 2. Try to make it 16 chars long and should be alpha numeric holding special chars as well. 3. Changing username does not affect any of your privileges or rights towards the website. How to change username? Now that you have learnt the importance of username, you must also know how to change the username. There are three ways by which you can change the username. 1. By logging into admin panel dashboard 2. By using a name changer plugin 3. By making changes in phpMyAdmin file 1. By logging into admin panel dashboard This method actually involves creation of a new user and assigning that user all the administrative rights. For this you need to create a new email account for registering. But that’s not a big deal. Create a new user with desired username and password from Users-> Add New and make sure that you have all the required permissions and content to the new user. Now, it’s time to delete the original one. Users -> All Users -> Delete Users. 2. By using a name changer plugin You can use any of the username changer plugin available over the internet. You just have to download and activate that. Now navigate to Users->Username Changer. This is just a single click job. After you navigate to the plugin it will ask for the old username and the new username to be allocated. Bingo!! Username is changed. The best part regarding this plugin is that you can uninstall the plugin once the changes have come in effect. 3. By making changes in phpMyAdmin file This is quite difficult and risky thing. This method changes the database entries so, it’s not recommended by the professionals. This should be used under worst case circumstances that you have forgot your username and password or email address you used to make the website. Open your cPanel->phpMyadmin. From the list of databases select the admin database very carefully. Now click on wp_users. Now open the username you want to edit by clicking on “Edit”. Now make the changes and hit the save button. By following these strategies you can easily change the username of your Simple WordPress theme and make it strong and hack free.