What if I forgot my DokuWiki username or password?

The DokuWiki administration section is for managing the site settings, users, preferences and more. In the event you lose your username or pasword, you can reset and change passwords, and recover usernames. The purpose of this article is to reset and change passwords, and to recover the username for your DokuWiki site.

Note! You should bookmark this page for later reference, as most users eventually need to recover a password for various reasons.

How do I change or Reset my password?

Change Password in the user profile

Rotating the administrators password is a good practice for security reasons. The password can be changed in the DokuWiki admin profile. This section will explain how to change the DokuWiki password within the administrator dashboard.

1. Login in to your DokuWiki site.
2. 

   Click Update Profile at the top right.
   

3. 

   On the Update your account profile, Type the New password twice and enter the current password. Click Save.

   
   

   

   Now you should see a confirmation that the password was changed saying, User profile successfully updated.

Resetting with the “Set new Password” link

In the case that you forgot your DokuWiki password, DokuWiki has a built in “Set new password” feature that allows the user to reset their password from the DokuWiki login page. These are the steps for resetting your password in the admin Update profile section.

1. Click the Login link at the top right side of your DokuWiki site.
2. 

   Click the “Set new password” link at the bottom of the Login page.
   

3. 

   Type the username in the Send new password form and click “Set a new password“.
   

   If the username is not found you will get a” Sorry, we can’t find this user in our database Error.“
   

   

   If the submittal is successful, the “A confirmation link has been sent by email confirmation will display.“

   
   

4. 

   Check your email. A confirmation email will be sent to your email that is in the Admin profile.

   Click the link in the email to confirm the password reset.
   

   

   The DokuWiki site will load displaying “Your new password was sent by email.”

   
   

5. 

   Check your email again. Now there will be an email with the subject Your DokuWiki password.

   Now you can log in and change the password in the Admin profile to a password you can remember.

   
   

Changing the Password when the “Set new password” link fails

In the event the password reset feature fails on the DokuWiki login page, the password can be reset in the conf/local.php file. Because the passwords are encrypted in the file for security reasons, there is a work around that can allow you to reset the password in the conf.local.php file. Below are the steps for resetting your password manually.

1. 

   Create a new user on your DokuWiki site.
   

2. Log into cPanel and Navigate to the Files > File Manager.
3. Select the directory for your DokuWiki installation similar to the following:

   public_html/dokuwiki/conf/local.php

   Open the users.auth.php in the Code editor.
   

4. 

   Find the new user in the local.php file and copy the password to your admin password that was forgotten. The following is what the lines of code look like.

   This is the admin user password in yellow:

   admin:$1$ixOEi6Lj$0N2RMgn7u0ltQQSmR0qM6.:Webmaster:[email protected]:admin,user

   This is the new users password in yellow:

   newbery:$1$QUO1y2cB$9ZMyZkT6e201hKJG4cSlN0:newbery:[email protected]:user

   The password is encrypted in a scrambled set of characters to prevent a password compromise. Copy the new users encrypted password and paste it over the admin encrypted password, replacing the text with the new password.

   Save the file.

   Now the admin password will be the new users password.

   
   

5. Log into your DokuWiki and remove the new user from the site for security. Congratulations, the password was changed for your admin.

How do I find my username

Recovering a Forgotten Username

When resetting the password for DokuWiki, the username is required to submit the “Set new password” form. If you forgot the username, this cannot be recovered from the “Set new password” page. The username can be retrieve in the conf/users.auth.php file on the server. Here are the steps to recover your username.

1. Log into cPanel and Navigate to the Files > File Manager.
2. Select the directory for your DokuWiki installation similar to the following:

   public_html/dokuwiki/conf/users.auth.php

   Open the users.auth.php in the Code editor.

   
   

3. 

   The Username will be found on the line that has your email address. In the snapshot the following is on on line 12.
   

   admin:$1$ixOEi6Lj$0N2RMgn7u0ltQQSmR0qM6.:Webmaster:[email protected]:admin,user

   In this case, the username is “admin“.