# Do Not Use admin As A Super User Username 1. [Home](https://mysites.guru/) 2. [Tools](https://mysites.guru/tools/) 3. [User accounts and access](https://mysites.guru/tools/user-accounts/) 4. Do Not Use admin As A Super User Username # Do Not Use admin As A Super User Username ![Do Not Use admin As A Super User Username](https://mysites.guru/_astro/super-admin-username.D_vlXaQ5_Z1QkRP4.webp) A login is only two things, a username and a password. If your Super User account is named admin, an attacker already has half of it before they start guessing. Article Contents - [How the admin username check works](#how-the-admin-username-check-works) - [Half the login guessed before they start](#half-the-login-guessed-before-they-start) - [A username nothing on the site gives away](#a-username-nothing-on-the-site-gives-away) - [Renaming the admin Super User](#renaming-the-admin-super-user) - [Why the rename isn’t automated](#why-the-rename-isnt-automated) - [Further Reading](#further-reading) - [Frequently Asked Questions](#faq) How common is this? - 9.5% of the Joomla sites we have this data for fail this check. Platform: Joomla. Measured across the sites we audit, on each site's most recent snapshot. ## How the admin username check works This check reads the usernames of accounts in your Joomla Users table and flags any Super User account whose username is exactly `admin`. It looks specifically at privileged accounts. A regular Registered or Author-level user named `admin` is a naming quirk; a Super User named `admin` is a login credential with full control of the site, and that is the case this check exists to catch. ## Half the login guessed before they start A login is only two things: a username and a password. If your Super User account is named `admin`, an attacker already has one of those two things before they have even started guessing. Every credential-stuffing list, every automated brute force tool, and every attacker sitting at a keyboard trying your site by hand starts with `admin` as the username, because it costs them nothing to try and it works often enough to be worth trying first. What is left standing between an attacker and your account is the password alone. That is a weaker position than it needs to be, and it costs nothing to fix. A predictable username also tends to travel with other predictable choices; sites that never got around to renaming the default admin account have often never got around to setting a strong password either, and the two weaknesses compound each other rather than sitting independently. There is also a practical login-flow risk specific to Joomla. If your username is `admin`, a brute force attempt does not need to find your username first. Every failed login attempt against your site is a real attempt against your actual account, rather than wasted effort against a username nobody uses. Removing the guessable username removes that entire first stage of the attack. This is separate from, and a much lower bar than, an attacker actively targeting your specific site. A guessable Super User username mostly matters against the automated, untargeted attempts that hit every Joomla site on the internet continuously: credential-stuffing bots working through breached password lists, and brute force scripts that simply try `admin` against thousands of login forms an hour, moving on the moment a couple of attempts fail. None of these care who you are. They care whether the first, cheapest guess happens to work, and a username of `admin` is always the first, cheapest guess. A guessable username also removes some of the value of a strong password on its own. Two-factor authentication closes this gap regardless of what the username is, because a correct username and password pair is no longer enough on its own to log in. If your Super User account does not already have two-factor authentication enabled, fixing the username here is worth doing alongside it, not instead of it. ## A username nothing on the site gives away Your Super User account has a username that is not `admin`, and is not easily guessable from your name, your company name, or anything published on the site. The account can still be called whatever you like in Joomla’s public-facing Name field; only the login username needs to change. Avoid swapping one guessable value for another. A username built from your company name, your domain, or the name that already appears in your site’s byline is only marginally better than `admin`, because it is sitting in public view on the same site. The goal is a username that is not derivable from anything a visitor to your site can already see. ## Renaming the admin Super User 1. Log in to `https://yoursite.com/administrator` and go to Users > Manage. 2. Find the account with Super User access whose username is `admin`. 3. Open the account, and in the Account Details tab, change the Username field to something that is not guessable. Leave the Name field as it is if you want your public byline to stay the same; the two fields are independent. 4. Save the change, then log out and confirm you can log back in with the new username before you close the session. 5. While you are in there, check for any other accounts with a guessable username holding Super User access, particularly ones you did not create yourself. If you find one you do not recognise, treat it as a sign of compromise rather than a simple naming issue and investigate further before doing anything else. ## Why the rename isn’t automated We check every Super User account’s username on each snapshot and flag `admin` as an issue. There is no one-click fix for this, because renaming a login account is something we leave in your hands rather than doing on your behalf, so we flag it clearly and point you to the fix. If you are checking Super User accounts because you suspect a compromise rather than tidying up a long-standing default, the more urgent check is for accounts an attacker created themselves after breaking in, which is what our [rogue Super Admin accounts check](https://mysites.guru/tools/hacked-site-detection/rogue-super-admin-accounts/) looks for. ## [Do Not Use admin As A Super User Username](https://mysites.guru/free-audit/?check=joomla/useraccountsandaccess/superadmin) mySites.guru checks every connected site for this automatically and flags it the moment it appears. These run twice a day on every connected site. [Check your site for free](https://mysites.guru/free-audit/?check=joomla/useraccountsandaccess/superadmin) ## Further Reading - [62 reasons to fire your Super Administrator](https://magazine.joomla.org/topics/item/148-62-reasons-to-fire-your-super-admin) - [Universal User Management Across Sites](https://mysites.guru/blog/universal-user-management-for-joomla-and-wordpress-sites/) ## Frequently Asked Questions Show all Why is admin still the default on some Joomla sites? Older versions of Joomla pre-filled the first account created during installation with the username admin, and most people never changed it. Newer versions of Joomla ask you to choose a username during setup, so this mostly affects sites that were first installed a long time ago and have been upgraded in place since. Does changing my username also change my public display name? No, and this is a common point of confusion. Joomla's Name field is what shows publicly next to articles you write; the Username field is only used to log in and is never shown to visitors. You can change the username without affecting how your name appears on the site. Is it enough to just have a strong password if my username is admin? It is not nothing, but it removes a layer that costs you nothing to keep. A strong password without a guessable username makes both credential stuffing and brute force attacks measurably harder, because the attacker has to find two unknowns instead of one. [![EU icon: AI MODIFIED](https://mysites.guru/_astro/ai-modified.CaoawZEQ_1In0VX.webp)Written and edited by a human, with AI assistance. Our approach to AI](https://mysites.guru/ai-statement/) ### Article Contents - [How the admin username check works](#how-the-admin-username-check-works) - [Half the login guessed before they start](#half-the-login-guessed-before-they-start) - [A username nothing on the site gives away](#a-username-nothing-on-the-site-gives-away) - [Renaming the admin Super User](#renaming-the-admin-super-user) - [Why the rename isn’t automated](#why-the-rename-isnt-automated) - [Further Reading](#further-reading) - [Frequently Asked Questions](#faq) - **Published** - 28 August 2026 - **Applies to** - Joomla - **One-click fix** - Manual fix Share [](https://x.com/intent/post?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmysites.guru%2Ftools%2Fuser-accounts%2Fsuper-admin-username%2F&text=Do%20Not%20Use%20admin%20As%20A%20Super%20User%20Username)[](https://bsky.app/intent/compose?text=Do%20Not%20Use%20admin%20As%20A%20Super%20User%20Username%20https%3A%2F%2Fmysites.guru%2Ftools%2Fuser-accounts%2Fsuper-admin-username%2F)[](https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fmysites.guru%2Ftools%2Fuser-accounts%2Fsuper-admin-username%2F) Topics [User accounts and access](https://mysites.guru/tools/user-accounts/)Joomla ★★★★★ > "[HACK INSPECT TOOLS](https://mysites.guru/blog/find-hacked-files-and-backdoors-in-joomla-and-wordpress/) ARE AMAZING!" ![Stergios Zgouletas](https://mysites.guru/images/reviews/stergios-zgouletas.webp) Stergios Zgouletas [](https://mysites.guru/reviews/) ## More checks in [User accounts and access](https://mysites.guru/tools/user-accounts/) - [ ### Accounts Nobody Has Used In Six Months A Joomla account nobody has logged into for six months is not being watched by anyone, including you. That makes it an easy target for credential stuffing. ](https://mysites.guru/tools/user-accounts/inactive-user-accounts/) - [ ### The joomla.user.helper Username Signature A Joomla username matching joomla.user.helper.XXXX is not a setting to fix. It is a forensic indicator that an attacker already created an account on your site. ](https://mysites.guru/tools/user-accounts/joomla-user-helper-usernames/) - [ ### Turn Off User Registration If You Do Not Use It Open registration on a site you do not need it on is a magnet for spam bots, and a free foothold the moment an authenticated-only flaw appears in an extension. ](https://mysites.guru/tools/user-accounts/user-registration-enabled/) ## More from the blog [ ![Finding Rogue Admin Accounts Across Every Joomla Site You Manage](https://mysites.guru/_astro/find-rogue-admin-accounts-joomla.BYXg9UM6_Z1lcGo7.webp) ### Finding Rogue Admin Accounts Across Every Joomla Site You Manage Attackers plant admin accounts to walk back in after you clean the files. How to find rogue admins across every Joomla site you manage, from one screen. ](https://mysites.guru/blog/find-rogue-admin-accounts-joomla/) ## See where your own sites stand One free audit of one site · no card · about 2 minutes to connect [Get Your Free Site Audit](https://manage.mysites.guru/en/register) [How the admin username check works](#how-the-admin-username-check-works) [Half the login guessed before they start](#half-the-login-guessed-before-they-start) [A username nothing on the site gives away](#a-username-nothing-on-the-site-gives-away) [Renaming the admin Super User](#renaming-the-admin-super-user) [Why the rename isn’t automated](#why-the-rename-isnt-automated) [Further Reading](#further-reading) [Frequently Asked Questions](#faq)