Learn DNN / DotNetNuke

How to Reset Host and Admin Login Details

By Lee Sykes

November 2009

In this tutorial we demonstrate how to reset your Host SuperUser and Administrator accounts in DotNetNuke when you have forgotten the username and password.

Even if you know the username to your Host user account, you will find that if you request the password via email, it will send the email, but for the Host user account, the password will be replaced with asterisks, so this will not help you to recover your details and login.

The only way to get access as a Host or Admin user is to edit the tables in your DotNetNuke database. We demonstrate a quick and easy technique to quickly create a new Host SuperUser account so that you can access your DotNetNuke website and reset any details necessary.

We begin by showing you how to enable user registration of your DotNetNuke portal, this is useful if you have previously disabled the registration option.

We then show you how to create a new user and upgrade the user to a Host SuperUser by editing the SQL tables, following this we reset the details for the Administrator users and finish with creating SQL queries to search for all administrators and to quickly upgrade a user account to a SuperUser account.

This tutorial will require you to access the SQL Server tables from your DotNetNuke installation. We use SQL Server Management Studio Express to view the tables within our DotNetNuke installation. SQL Server Express is available as a free download, we covered installing SQL Server Express in this tutorial:

How to Install DotNetNuke to Vista

Before you continue, if you are following these steps on your live website, make sure you create a backup of your website and SQL database before continuing with this tutorial.

The videos contain:

Video 1 - Introduction, How to Connect to a Live SQL Server Database

Introduction and pre-requisites
How to connect to the live SQL database
How to find the username and password connection string access for the SQL database
Viewing the web.config file
How to connect to the SQL server with SQL Server Management Studio
Using the Object Explorer to view the Databases

Time Length: 8min 48secs

Video 2 - How to Reset the Host User Account

How to enable User Registration in the DotNetNuke portal
How to update the Portals table
How to create a new user account
How to upgrade a standard user account to have Host access
Viewing the Users table
Logging in as the new Host user account
How to reset the original Host SuperUser account

Time Length: 7min 36secs

Video 3 - How to Reset the Administrator User Account

How to login as the original Host user and delete the new Host user account
How to reset the admin account
How to create a new administrator user account
How to reset the portal to assign the new admin account as the main administrator
How to find admin users by using a SQL query
Viewing the information from the Users, UserRoles, and Roles tables

Time Length: 8min 45secs