When the site was built, someone typed an email address into a settings field and nobody looked at it again. Perhaps it was your developer’s address, or a staff member who has since left, or a Gmail account you stopped checking years ago. Then a plugin breaks the site, WordPress sends a warning with a special recovery link, and it goes to an inbox nobody reads.
Fixing it is quick if the site can send email, and slower if it cannot. Before the steps to change the WordPress admin email, it helps to see how that address differs from the one on your own login, and what WordPress actually sends there.
Two addresses that are easy to confuse
A WordPress site holds email addresses in two separate places, and they do different jobs.
| Site admin email address | Your user email | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it is set | Settings → General, “Administration Email Address” | Users → Profile, “Email” |
| Belongs to | The site as a whole | One person’s login |
| Used for | Notices about the site | Password resets and notices about that account |
| Can you log in with it? | Not by itself | Yes, along with the username |
They can be the same address, and on small sites they often are. But changing one does not change the other. If what you need is to update the email on your own account, that is covered in our post on updating the email on a user profile.
What WordPress sends to the site admin email address
Depending on your settings, WordPress itself sends:
- Technical issue warnings. If a plugin or theme crashes the site badly enough, WordPress sends an email headed with a warning about a technical issue, along with a link that lets you log in safely and deactivate the cause. This is the one you most want to receive.
- Automatic update reports for WordPress itself, and for plugins and themes set to update automatically.
- New user notices when someone registers or an account is created.
- Password reset notices when a user resets a forgotten password.
- Comments awaiting moderation, if comments are open and held for approval.
Plugins lean on it too. Many form, shop and security plugins use the admin address as their default recipient until someone sets a different one, so changing it can change who receives enquiries or order alerts. Check your form plugin’s notification settings and any shop email settings after the switch.
The address also appears in some emails WordPress sends to your users, as the address to contact if they did not request a change. A former contractor’s address in that line looks odd to a customer.
How to change the WordPress admin email
- Log in as an Administrator and go to Settings → General.
- Find Administration Email Address. The note under it explains that a new address must be confirmed before it becomes active.
- Type the new address and press Save Changes at the bottom.
- Back on the screen, a line now says there is a pending change of the admin email to your new address. The old address is still active.
- Open the inbox for the new address and find the WordPress confirmation email. Click the link in it while logged in to the site.
- Return to Settings → General. The pending notice should be gone and the new address should show in the field.
Once the change goes through, WordPress usually sends a short notice to the old address saying it has been replaced. If the old inbox belongs to someone outside the business, that is worth knowing, because they will see it.
Changed your mind before confirming? The pending notice has a link to cancel it.
When the confirmation email never arrives
This is the usual sticking point, and it is rarely about the admin email at all. It normally means the site is not sending email reliably, which also means form notifications and password resets may be going missing.
- Check spam and promotions folders for the new address, and search for your site’s name.
- Try a password reset on a test account. If that email does not arrive either, the problem is the site’s email sending, not this setting.
- Set up proper sending. An SMTP plugin connected to your business email or a sending service fixes most of these cases. Our post on setting up SMTP in WordPress explains the options, and why WordPress is not sending emails covers the troubleshooting.
- Save the new address again once email is working, which sends a fresh confirmation.
There is no button in the dashboard that skips the confirmation. A developer with hosting access can change the stored value directly, using WP-CLI or the database, but fix the email sending first, otherwise you have changed the address without making it useful.
The “is this still correct?” screen
Every so often, after an Administrator logs in, WordPress shows a screen titled Administration email verification asking whether the admin address is still right. By default it appears roughly every six months. It offers three choices:
- The email is correct: confirms it and takes you to the dashboard.
- Update: takes you to Settings → General to change it.
- Remind me later: postpones the question for a few days.
Treat it as a genuine prompt rather than something to click past. It exists because so many sites have an outdated address in that field.
Choosing the right address
The admin email should belong to the business, not to a person and not to a supplier. A few practical choices:
- Use a role address on your domain, such as website@ or webadmin@, that forwards to two people. If one is on holiday, the other sees the warning.
- Avoid a single employee’s personal inbox. When they leave, so does your early-warning system. Changing it belongs on the checklist in our post on removing access when someone leaves.
- Your developer or maintenance provider can be copied in through forwarding, but the address itself should stay yours. You can then change who receives it without touching WordPress at all.
For where this field sits among the other settings, our plain-English tour of the dashboard covers the rest of the General screen, and our WordPress management guide collects the other housekeeping jobs.
Frequently asked questions
Is the admin email shown to visitors on my website?
WordPress does not display it on the public site by default. It appears in some emails WordPress sends to your registered users, and a theme or plugin could choose to show it, though that is unusual. If you want a public contact address on the site, add it to your contact page separately rather than relying on the admin address.
Does changing the admin email change how I log in?
No. You log in with your username or the email on your own user profile, and the admin address is not tied to any login. If both happen to be the same today and you change only the admin address, your login keeps working exactly as before. Change your profile email separately if you need to.
Can the admin email be the same as my own user email?
Yes, and on a one-person business that is often simplest. The drawback is that site warnings then depend on one inbox. Many businesses prefer a shared role address for the site and personal addresses for each login, so notices still reach someone when people change jobs.
Can technical issue warnings go to my developer instead?
The simplest approach is to forward the admin address to them as well as to yourself. A developer can also define a separate recovery email address in the site’s wp-config.php file, which WordPress then uses only for those technical issue warnings, while everything else still goes to the admin address.
Warnings like these are only useful when somebody acts on them. Handing that watching, and the small fixes that follow, to someone else is what our WordPress monthly maintenance is for.
Next in this series: Discourage Search Engines in WordPress: What It Does
