I love BlogEngine, I really do. And I know am using an outdated version of BE and all, but there is no RESET PASSWORD function. I forgot my BlogEngine admin password. I only have to remember about 40 passwords between my personal and professional life! I didn't see an option to reset it and knowing that it was one-way hashed in the database, I just let it go and kind of forgot about my blog for a little bit (working full-time definitely helped that). So, a coworker finally prodded me to look into resetting the admin password manually.
Some blog posts I found on how to do this said to reset the admin password to an empty string in the database and it would automatically reset. I tried that (several times, in fact) and it didn't work. Here is what worked:
So here's how to reset your BlogEngine password when using MSSQL:
1. Open up your database management software of choice and find the BE_Users table.
2. Edit the table to remove the NOT NULL constraint from the password column (yes, seriously).
3. Find your username record and remove the hash so that the password column is null.
4. Add the NOT NULL constraint back.
5. Restart IIS or reupload the web.config file (better option) to "reset" BE.
6. Sign in using your admin username and the default password "admin".
7. Authenticate and promptly change your admin password to something you won't forget anytime soon lest you repeat steps 1 - 6 in an endless and sad loop.
This is like a builder building you a house and only giving you ONE key. If you lose the key, you're locked out forever. Or you can break a window to get in. Going into the DB and wiping out the password is just like breaking the window to gain access.
So, I know that BlogEngine is great and I've never had any functional issues with it, but I can't help but feel frustrated that anyone would release a web application with a one-way hashed password and no sort of easily attained reset password functionality. Was this oversight or planned? I will probably never know but at least now you know how to reset it DBA style. And as a plus, I'm back and look for more new posts soon!