Reset Concrete CMS Password Manually

This is a community-contributed tutorial. This tutorial is over a year old and may not apply to your version of Concrete CMS.
Mar 2, 2019

If you have lost your password for any reasons, you can use the built-in password reset form on the /login page. If the email address on the account you want to reset is incorrect and you have access to the database, you can update the email address in the Users table and then use the password reset form. The following method should be considered a last resort and is slightly risky as it will show the new password to anyone who happens to request the URL while the code is added to the file.

Given the above alternatives and warnings, you can follow this tutorial and reset a password manually. This tutorial supposes that you have SFTP access and are able to edit files in your server.

  1. Open \application\bootstrap\app.php file.
  2. Add the following code at the end of this file.
Route::register('/manual_reset_password', function() {

    $userIDToReset = 0; //enter USER_ID here (admin USER_ID is 1)
    $newPassword = 'ENTER YOUR NEW PASSWORD HERE';

    $hasher = $this->app->make(Concrete\Core\Encryption\PasswordHasher::class);

    $ui = UserInfo::getByID($userIDToReset);
    $username = $ui->getUserName();

    $db = Database::connection();
    $dh = Loader::helper('date');
    $dateTime = $dh->getOverridableNow();

    //update password
    $statement = $db->executeQuery(
        'UPDATE Users SET uPassword = ?, uLastPasswordChange = ?  WHERE uID = ?;', 
        array(
            $hasher->HashPassword($newPassword),    
            $dateTime,
            intval($userIDToReset)
        )
    ); 

    //delete password
    $statement = $db->executeQuery(
        'DELETE FROM UserValidationHashes WHERE uID = ?;', 
        array(
            $userIDToReset  
        )
    ); 

    printf("Password for username = %s (ID=%s) has been changed to '%s'.", $username, $userIDToReset, $newPassword);
    printf("<h2 style='color:red'>");
    printf("DO NOT FORGET TO REMOVE THIS CODE AFTER CHANGING THE PASSWORD.");
    printf("</h2>");

});
  1. Change $userIDToReset & $newPassword appropriately.
  2. Run this path in your browser: http://example.com/index.php/manual_reset_password
  3. After checking whether your new password works, remove the appended code in step 2.
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