When developing a Drupal site, sometimes you have the need to reset a password - either for yourself or another user. Often, when working with a copy of live data, I want to be able to login as another user who is already in the system. Rather than asking them for their password, I use this method to change it.

While Drupal's built-in "reset password" functionality or user editing capabilities work great, if you're like me and tend to work with your database editor open, there's a quick-and-dirty way to quickly change a user's password.

Using phpMyAdmin, navigate to Drupal's "user" table and navigate your way to the user record you're interested in. Click to edit the record then type in the new password in the password field.

Here's where the magic comes in - before you hit "submit", change the "function" select box to "MD5" - this will encode the plaintext password using the MD5 hash - the same one Drupal uses. If you don't perform this step, Drupal will be trying to compare a plaintext password against a hashed password - they'll never match and the password won't work.

More Quicktips

• ‹ Using Context Module to Set Bo…
• 51 of 103
• Do Not Use "admin" a… ›