Admin panel login and account
How to log in to the PHPPoll admin panel, change your username and password, log out safely and what protects the login: hashing, lockout and CSRF tokens.
The admin panel is where you create polls, read results and change settings. It is located in the admin/ folder of your installation, for example https://www.example.com/poll/admin/.
Log in
- Open the admin address in your browser.
- Enter the username and password you created during installation.
- Click Log in. You arrive at the dashboard.
Log out
Click Log out in the top bar. Always log out on shared computers.
Change username or password
- Open Settings → Account.
- Change the username if you wish.
- To set a new password, enter your current password and the new password twice (minimum 8 characters). Leave the fields empty to keep the old password.
- Click Save changes.
Forgot your password?
Passwords are stored as one-way hashes and cannot be shown. To reset it, open data/settings.xml on your server, delete the lines <admin_user> and <admin_pass> (leave the empty tags or remove them completely) and open /admin/ again – the first-start wizard appears and you can create a new account. Your polls and votes are not affected.
Only do this on your own server and complete the wizard immediately, as the setup screen is open to anyone while no account exists.
How the login is protected
- Hashed passwords using PHP's
password_hash. - Login lockout: after 5 failed attempts from the same address, login is blocked for 15 minutes.
- CSRF tokens in every admin form, so other websites cannot trigger actions in your name.
- Session protection: the session ID changes on login, and the cookie is HTTP-only.
For more see Security and privacy.
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