The username on your account was chosen in a hurry. It might be “admin”, your old company name, a misspelling, or the name of the developer who built the site. You open your profile to fix it and the box is greyed out, with a short note underneath: Usernames cannot be changed.
That note is accurate. WordPress does not let anyone, even an administrator, edit a username from the dashboard. Even so, there are reliable ways to change your WordPress username in practice, and quite often the name that bothers you is not the username at all. Start by working out which one it is.
Check what you actually want to change
WordPress stores three different names for every account, and people often mean one of the other two.
| Name | Where it is used | Can you edit it? |
|---|---|---|
| Username | Logging in; the basis of your author page address | Not from the dashboard |
| Nickname | One of the options for the name shown publicly | Yes, in the profile |
| Display name | The author name on posts, comments and author boxes | Yes, chosen from a dropdown in the profile |
If your complaint is that your posts show “jsmith1987” as the author, that is the display name, and it takes a minute to fix. If the issue is what you type to log in, or the username appearing in your author page address, read on to the later options.
Option 1: change the name people see
- Go to Users → Profile, or for someone else, Users → All Users and click their name.
- Fill in First Name and Last Name if they are empty.
- Change the Nickname to whatever you would like to be called. It is required, so it cannot be left blank.
- Open Display name publicly as and choose from the list. Whatever you typed in the name fields above appears there as a choice, alongside the username.
- Click Update Profile (or Update User when editing someone else).
Every post by that account now shows the new name. Your login stays the same. If you also want to write a short biography or set a profile photo to go with the name, see the post on setting up an author profile.
Option 2: change your WordPress username by moving to a new account
This is the cleanest way to get a genuinely new username, and it uses only standard WordPress screens. The idea is simple: make a new account with the username you want, move the old account’s content to it, then delete the old one.
There is one catch. Every account needs its own email address, and you probably want to keep using your current one. So you free it up first.
- Take a backup of the site.
- Free up the email address. In the old account’s profile, change the email to a temporary one you can read, such as a second work address. WordPress sends a confirmation link to the new address before switching, so click it. If you are changing someone else’s account as an administrator, the change applies straight away.
- Create the new account under Users → Add User with the username you want, your usual email address and the same role as the old account. The guide to adding a new user in WordPress covers each field.
- Log in as the new account in a private browser window and confirm everything you need is there.
- Delete the old account from the Users list. When WordPress asks what to do with its content, choose Attribute all content to another user and pick the new account. This step is explained fully in deleting a user while keeping their posts.
If the old account is your only administrator, do this in that order and do not delete anything until you have logged in successfully with the new administrator account. Otherwise you can lock yourself out.
What does not move across
Posts, pages and media come with you. Several things tied to the old account do not, and you will need to redo them:
- your profile details: biography, display name choice and profile colour scheme
- two-factor login, which has to be set up again on the new account
- application passwords, so any app or integration that connected with the old account needs reconnecting
- plugin connections made under the old account, for example a service that was linked by a specific administrator
- your author page address, which is based on the username and will change
That last point matters if your author page gets visitors. Set up a redirect from the old author address to the new one so nobody lands on a “not found” page.
Option 3: a username-changing plugin
A few small plugins in the WordPress plugin directory add an editable username field to the profile screen. Searching the directory for “username changer” will show them. They work by editing the stored username directly, which saves you the account shuffle in Option 2.
If you go this way, choose one that has been updated recently and has a working support forum, take a backup first, and check afterwards whether your author page address changed too. Some update it, some leave the old one. Once the username is changed, you can remove the plugin; the change stays.
Use it for the one-off fix and then remove it. Leaving a username editor installed permanently undoes a restriction that exists partly so usernames stay stable for everything that relies on them.
Option 4: editing the database
The username is stored in the users table in the site’s database, in a column called user_login. A developer can change it there through phpMyAdmin or similar tools. The same row holds user_nicename, which is the version used in your author page address, and that may need changing too.
This route is fine for someone who knows the database, but it is not where a business owner should start. Back up the database before any edit, change only the one row, and log in again afterwards with the new username. On a multisite network, network administrators are also recorded by username in a separate setting, so a database edit there needs more care. If that sentence does not mean much to you, Option 2 is the safer path.
Usernames worth changing, and ones to leave
Change it if it is “admin” or another obvious guess, if it is the name of a former developer or employee, or if it reveals something you would rather not show publicly. “admin” is the first name automated login attacks try, so moving away from it removes one free guess, although a strong password and two-factor login matter far more.
Leave it if the only problem is how your name appears on posts. Option 1 fixes that without any risk.
Usernames are one small part of the accounts picture. The rest, from roles to removing people, is in the section on managing your WordPress users, and the site as a whole in our WordPress guide for business owners.
Frequently asked questions
Why does WordPress not allow usernames to be changed?
The username is the fixed identifier you log in with, and it is used to build other things, such as the author page address. Keeping it stable avoids broken links and confusion between accounts. WordPress lets you change everything people see, the nickname and display name, while the login name stays put.
Can I log in with my email address instead of my username?
Yes. The standard WordPress login form accepts either the username or the email address on the account. If the username is awkward to type but you have no other reason to change it, logging in with your email address may solve the problem without any changes at all.
Will changing my username affect my SEO?
Your posts and pages keep their addresses, so their search visibility is not affected. The only address that changes is your author archive page. If that page has visitors or links pointing to it, redirect the old address to the new one and the effect should be minimal.
Does a new username change my display name on old comments?
Not automatically. Comments store the name that was shown when they were written. Posts reassigned to a new account will show the new account’s display name, but older comments you left keep the name they were posted under.
The account switch in Option 2 is fiddly the first time, mostly because of the email shuffle and the things connected to the old account. Our WordPress support service can do it for you, starting with a backup of the site.
Next in this series: WordPress Application Passwords: What They Are For
