FAQs

Keeping your website up to date is essential for professionalism, and one small but important detail is your copyright year in the footer. Instead of manually updating it every year, you can set it up to update automatically using a simple code snippet.

If your theme uses widgets, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to Appearance > Widgets.
2. Locate the footer widget area.
3. Add a Custom HTML block.
4. Insert the following code: 
   
   &copy; <span id="year"></span> Your Website Name. All Rights Reserved. <script> document.getElementById("year").textContent = new Date().getFullYear(); </script>
5. Click Update and check your site to confirm the changes.

JavaScript is used here since PHP is not supported in widget areas.

If you are using the free version of Elementor, follow these steps:

1. Open your WordPress dashboard and go to Appearance > Widgets or Templates > Theme Builder > Footer (if your theme supports footer templates).
2. Select the footer section and open it in Elementor.
3. Drag and drop a Text Editor widget into your footer area.
4. Enter the following text: 
   
   &copy; <span id="year"></span> Your Website Name. All Rights Reserved. <script> document.getElementById("year").textContent = new Date().getFullYear(); </script>
5. Click Update and check your site to confirm the automatic update.

Elementor Free does not support PHP code, so JavaScript is the best way to ensure the year updates automatically.

Recover lost or hacked WordPress password from PHPMyAdmin / MySQL.

Imagine someone somehow manages to break into your WordPress dashboard, and changes it’s password and email. If you request a “Forget Password”, the reset password link will be mailed to the new email, not to your email. The result will be – you losing control over your WordPress-powered site. I think that’s enough to picturize that traumatic situation.

How would you cope up with such a problem? The first recommended step for a beginner-level user to restore WordPress is to contact the Hosting service. The restoration may take sometime, some hours, a day or even more depending on your Hosting provider’s service.

If you can dare to work in the cPanel or the control panel that your service has provided you with; here is a rather quick way to restore your password a few minutes.

Change / Reset WordPress password from MySQL / PHPMyAdmin

In the rest of this article, we’ll see how to reset WordPress password from PHPMyAdmin or MySQL.

Note: Implement only one of the below given methods, either Method#1 or Method#2 since both of these methods are similar and yield the same results. Following one of these two methods will help you to quickly regain control over your hacked WordPress admin account.

Method#1 – The Long way through PHPMyAdmin table editing

This method involves editing and updating the ‘wp_users’ table values to reset our lost WordPress password. The method is little longer but is also easy enough to follow without knowing technical things.

Step 1: Head over to PHPMyAdmin using your cPanel (or the hosting panel that your hosting service supports).

Step 2: Click on your WordPress database.

Step 3: Navigate to and click the table wp_users.

Step 4: Edit the row with your WordPress username.

Step 5: Now, in the user_pass field, change the function to MD5 and enter your new password in the Value section (refer below screenshot).

Step 6: Click “Go” or similar option at the bottom to update the table values.

Method#2 – The Short way through MySQL

This methods implements the direct SQL query execution to update the wp_users table value to reset our hacked WordPress password.

Step 1: Follow the first 3 steps of the above method.

Step 2: Go to SQL or MySQL section in your PHPMyAdmin.

Now, enter the below given query:

UPDATE `wp_users` SET `user_pass`= MD5('yourpassword') WHERE `user_login`='yourusername';

Put your new password in place of <your password> and replace <your username> with your WordPress username.

Step 3: Click “Go” or similar option at the bottom to execute the query.

Congrats! You’ve successfully changed your WordPress password and regained the control over your WordPress admin, without even contacting your hosting provider. I found Method#2 very quick to implement, what about you?