How to update your passwords

Time to Read: 10 minutes Difficulty Level: Beginner
Tools Needed: access to your hosting control panel (Plesk), current passwords Last Updated: 17/06/2019

How to update your passwords

This guide will show you how to update passwords that are associated with your server, mail and website. It’s good practice to update your passwords regularly anyway but you should always update your passwords in the event of a compromise or even a suspected compromise. You should also update relevant passwords whenever someone leaves your company or if you’re revoking access previously given to a third party, such as an external developer.

Magento user passwords
Wordpress user passwords
Email passwords
FTP/SSH passwords
Plesk admin password

Magento user passwords

1) Log into your Magento store’s admin area

2) Click on your username in the top right-hand corner. Select Account Setting.

3) Enter your new password. You’ll need to provide your current password to confirm the change. When you’re done, click Save Account to confirm the changes.

4) To update additional user accounts browse to System, then All Users. From here you can click the user to select them and proceed to update their password.

Wordpress user passwords

1) Log into your Wordpress dashboard area

2) Browse to Users, then All Users. Select the username that you want to update the password for.

3) Click Generate Password.

4) Select Update Profile to confirm the new password.

Email passwords

1) Log into your Plesk control panel and browse to your domain. Select the Mail tool.

2) Click on the relevant email account and type your password in. You’ll need to enter it again into the Confirm Password field.

3) Click OK to confirm the change to the email account.

You may find our guide for creating new email addresses useful as a visual reference for updating your password.

4) After updating your mail password, you’ll need to update any of your mail clients and applications with the password for them to function correctly. You will not be able to send or receive email until you have taken this step. Our guide here should point you in the right direction.

FTP/SSH passwords

To update the password for your SSH user, you’ll need to update the password for your primary FTP user.

1) Log into the Plesk panel. Select your domain and browse to the Web Hosting Access tool.

2) Enter a new password into the Password and Confirm Password fields. Select OK once you’re done to confirm the change.

3) Alternatively if you wish to revoke SSH access entirely for this user, you can do this in the same menu via the dropdown menu for Access to the server over SSH. Update this setting to Forbidden before confirming the change with OK.

4) Passwords for any additional FTP users can be updated via the FTP access tool. This will display all of your FTP users, including the primary user that you may have already changed the password for as per the above.

5) Click on the user’s name and then enter their password into the New password and Confirm password fields before confirming the change by clicking OK.

6) You can remove additional FTP users entirely from this menu if you prefer. To do this, check the box next to the FTP user in question and click the Remove button. You can only remove the additional FTP users this way - the primary FTP user cannot be removed.

You may also want to take this opportunity to confirm that access to your site via FTP and SSH is restricted by your server’s firewall. We have a guide to managing your firewall here.

Plesk admin password

1) Log into your Plesk panel and select Change Password from the left-hand sidebar.

2) Enter your current password into the Old Password field and then enter your new password twice before clicking OK to confirm the change.