This week has seen a rather large scale attack of a bot network that specifically targets the “admin” user in WordPress installations. This means that if your site as a user called “admin” then your site is under threat of being a potential target.
No matter if you’re using “admin” as an active user or not: if it exists, your site is at risk. Period.
In this podcast I’ll show you how to change your user name. Sadly this isn’t as easy as just amending “admin” to something else; you’ll have to create a new user, then delete the “admin” user from your site. Don’t be afraid though, I’ll cover each and every step in detail and explain why this is necessary.
Enjoy!
Further Reading
- BBC News Report
- Matt’s post about this problem
- Kelly’s Step by step screenshots on how to create a new user
Thanks to Richard Bagnall for bringing this to my attention