WordPress: can't login

Problem: can't login to a WordPress blog I've set up for a friend, apparently after a password change, and the reminder email we ask WP to send never makes it. Blog's been up for a short while, and some plugins installed, etc. I'm trying to debug this systematically.

  1. Login
    1. Can't login as admin, the only account on the blog.
    2. WP documentation (login trouble, resetting your password…) was easy to find, but unhelpful. (URLs are case sensitive — WTF?) Advice offered with no explanations (why need cookies for login? why disable plugins?).
    3. Disabling plugins doesn't help. Why should it?
      1. SSH to my host (or fish://foo@decodecode.net/home/foo/ ;o)$ cd webapps/foo_blog/wp-content/plugins/ $ mv 1bit/ 1-bit-audio-player/ all-in-one-seo-pack/ audio-player/ configure-smtp/ post-notification/ subscribe227-he_IL/ wp-mail-smtp/ $somewhereelse

      But, pointless.

      Note I just used my domain name, but any that resolves to the same IP (where blog hosted) can be substituted; even ssh foo@174.120.139.168 works.

    4. The backup SQL dump shows one row in wp_users table. DB stores MD5 hash of password, they say; dump has them in base64 or something? Anyway, useless (it's an old backup).
    5. Where does WP store the DB credentials?
    6. How to login to phpMyAdmin (from WebFaction's panel)?
      1. Ah, use database's name for username field, and the ugly random password WF created the application (WP) with, copy-pasted from the applications list. Why the confusing login form? Whose fault?
      2. Edited the row, replaced user_pass with something, and selected MD5 from the "function" dropdown — phpMyAdmin (MySQL, actually) will hash it itself so I can enter clear text. Cute.
        1. phpMyAdmin even shows the (uglified) SQL it used:UPDATE `foo_bar_blog`.`wp_users` SET `user_pass` = MD5( 'Af)%2*)x9$V2' ) WHERE `wp_users`.`ID` =1 LIMIT 1 ;
      3. This actually worked! How would I do it from the command line (mysql)?
    7. What was the problem, then?
  2. Reminder email
    1. Why didn't we receive any?

Notes

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Last modified 2010-04-27 14:59:12 +0000