How to Login to Drupal 7 & Retrieve Lost Password

Logging into Drupal

You can login to your Drupal website by going to:

http://yoursitesdomain.com/?q=user

(if you installed it in yoursitesdomain.com, for example).  You also can go to http://yoursitesdomain.com/user if your have previously enabled pretty URLs.

If you installed it in a folder instead, it would be something like http://yoursitesdomain.com/thefolder/?=user where "thefolder" would be the name of the folder you installed it in.

Once there, enter your username and password. 

(*Be sure to replace yoursitesdomain.com with your domain name.)

Request New Password

Sorry, unrecognized username or password. Have you forgotten your password?

If you have forgotten your Drupal password, the easiest way to to regain access is to use the "request new password" feature built into Drupal.

1. Click on the "Request New Password' tab on the login page.
2. Enter your e-mail address or Drupal username.
3. Click E-mail New Password

Further instructions have been sent to your e-mail address.

4. Check your e-mail for your "replacement login information."
5. Click on the link in the e-mail.  This link can only be used once.
6. Once on the page, click on the "login" button.
7. Enter a new password in the fields provided.
8. Click Save

The changes have been saved.

You are now logged in to Drupal 7. Be sure to use the password you just set to log in in the future.

Manually Resetting Your Password

Didn't get the email?

If you did not get the email or the email you specified for that username is no longer valid, it is possible to manually change the email address in the database so that you may request a new password. You would need access to your cPanel for this.

Note: Unlike WordPress and some other scripts, you cannot reset the password directly in the database, Instead you have to change the email to one that works, and then reset the password via Drupal's request new password feature.

Step 1: Figuring Out Which Database

Before we can change your email address in the database, we will need to know what database Drupal is using.  For some of you, this will be easy, since you only have one database, one Drupal installation and/or you already know the name of the database.  If you already know what database it is in (or think you can figure it out easily), then skip to step 2.  Otherwise, follow these steps to find out the database.

1. Login to cPanel.
2. In the "Files" section, click on "File Manager" to open the file manager in a new window or tab.
3. If it asks you for which directory to open, select "Web Root (public_html/www)"  and then press the "Go" button.  (This may not appear if you checked "skip this question" on a previous occasion.)
4. Locate the Drupal installation in the file system.  If you installed Drupal in the main folder of the primary domain, you should already be looking at the Drupal files. 
   
   If you installed it in a subfolder, or an addon domain, you will need to navigate to the appropriate folder.  You can use the list of yellow folders on the left, or you can use the list of files & blue folders in the middle/right.  (As an example, if you installed Drupal in the "drupal7" folder, you would double click on the blue folder icon next to "drupal7" in the middle/right.  That would take you inside the folder and show you Drupal's files.)
5. Double click on the blue folder for "sites."
6. Double click on the blue folder for "default."
7. Click on the file "settings.php" so that the background turns blue.
8. Click on the "Code Editor" icon at the top of the page.
9. A dialog box will pop up called "Code Editor." Click the "Edit" button.
10. Ignore any gray lines beginning with an * (which indicates it is a comment).
11. Scroll down until you find the line that says something similar to: 'database' => 'user_drp71', where user_drp71 would be whatever your database name is.  Write down or remember this database name, as you will need it in the next step.
12. Close the code editor and close the file manager.  No need to save anything, since nothing should have been changed here.

Note: The password line in this file is NOT your Drupal password.  Do not change the password in this file, otherwise your Drupal installation will stop working.

Step 2: Fixing the Email Address

To manually change your email address in the database so you can reset your password, please follow these steps:

1. Go the cPanel home page (login if you haven't already).
2. In the "Databases" section, click on "phpMyAdmin."  This will open phpMyAdmin in another window or tab.
3. Find the database in the left column and click on it.
4. Find the "users" table in the list of tables on the right side of the screen, and click on "Browse" immediately to the right the table "users."
5. Find the username you want to reset in the list of users.  (You may need to navigate multiple pages to find the user you want, if you have a lot of users.)
6. Click on the "Edit" icon next to the user you want to reset the password.
7. Next to "mail" you will see the e-mail that is currently set for this user.  Change the email address to a valid working e-mail address.
8. Click the "Go" button near the bottom of the page.
9. Follow the directions for requesting a new password above.