You want to create your own admin username/password. This way, you leave their logins untouched and you’ll have your own account, tied to your own email address.
To do this, you’ll need to add 3 records in the database. The three entries you make are:
- A row in the wp_users table, which will be the details for the new admin account. (username, MD5 password, email, etc…)
- Two rows in the wp_usermeta table, which assign the appropriate top level permissions to that new user’s user_id using the meta_keys:
wp_capabilities
andwp_user_level
. For full permissions,wp_capabilities
should be set toa:1:{s:13:"administrator";b:1;}
andwp_user_level
should be10
.
See my article for a full tutorial with phpMyAdmin: Add an Admin User To a WordPress Database