Blue Note Web Services

One of the most common email requests I receive is changing an osCommerce admin password.  Unfortunately there have been several different versions of osCommerce with different admin panel protection schemes, as well as a few different add-ons from other coders, each with a different method of maintaining passwords.  This post will cover the most common.

What sort of password prompt do you see when logging in to your admin screen?  The most common would look something like this:

99% of the time, this password prompt is being generated by the server.  You will need to contact your server administrator or web host to find out how to change it.  There is a contribution available for older versions of osCommerce that uses PHP to generate the same sort of password prompt.  If you have this contribution installed, your password is hard-coded in the file admin/includes/configure.php.  Be careful editing this file!  If you don’t know what you’re doing, you can break your entire admin panel!

Newer versions of osCommerce have PHP-based password protection in place.  The standard password prompt looks something like this:

If you have this sort of password prompt, changing your password is very easy!  Log in to osCommerce using any current admin username and password.  Once you’re logged in, click the “Configuration” box in the left-hand column, then click “Administrators.”  Select the admin user you want to change and click “edit.”  Enter the new password, new username if you choose, save and you’re done!

Next question – what to do if you’ve LOST your username or password?

Resetting an .htaccess password is accomplished through your web host.  If your site uses the newer osCommerce PHP-based authentication and you’ve lost your password, resetting it requires editing the values in the database – which is outside of the scope of this post.

If you’re not comfortable handling a password reset on your own, Blue Note offers password reset services for $25.  This service requires that you have your hosting control panel password – if you don’t, contact your host and have it reset.  Contact Blue Note Web Services for more information.