MediaWiki:Password reset-change

Use the changePassword.php maintenance script

The changePassword.php maintenance script allows system administrators to change the password for an account. For complete instructions see changePassword.php. If you are already familiar with maintenance scripts, run the following command from maintenance subdirectory:

1. set the password for username 'example' to 'newpassword'

php run.php changePassword --user=example --password=newpassword

Caution: System administrators should not know the unencrypted password for user accounts. A user may use the same password over many different sites. If one of their accounts that uses the same password is compromised, then suspicion can be thrown on the administrator. It is better to use "Email new password" to force the user to reset the password for their own account or to set a temporary password the user changes directly afterwards. Use Special:PasswordReset

Special:PasswordReset allows accounts with the 'editmyprivateinfo' permission to reset account passwords for the local installation of MediaWiki.

To use:

   Type username you want to reset in box provided and click "Reset password"
   An automatically generated password will be emailed to the user

For automatically inserting the username in links, use Special:PasswordReset?wpUsername=Foo.

Note that (confusingly) Special:ResetPassword is an older alias to Special:ChangePassword and not related to password resets. Differences between Special:PasswordReset and Special:ChangePassword

MediaWiki differentiates between "resetting" and "changing" a password. In password reset request (via Special:PasswordReset or from the login page), you will be asked to provide either an email and/or username (this is configurable) and then an email is automatically sent to you with a generated password. No login is required to access this page, but might be restricted with internal permission checks.

In password change request (via Special:ChangePassword), you'll be able to directly change the password on the spot (give the old one, and choose new one), but login is required to access the page. So if you cannot access Special:ChangePassword, use Special:PasswordReset to first get a temporary password to log in. But if you can access the former page, use it directly to change the password, this eliminates the need for the email stage. Special:PasswordReset can be disabled with Manual:$wgPasswordResetRoutes setting, if that's the case, and you cannot access Special:ChangePassword, then you need to ask your system administrator for help.