How to Access Your WordPress Database on SiteGround Hosting

For the average WordPress user, there aren’t too many reasons why you’d need to access your WordPress database. Almost all changes to your site can be accomplished via the WordPress admin area, or through the use of a plugin. But for more advanced, technical users, the database can be a powerful way to make some much needed updates to your site.

In this article, I’ll explain:

1. how to access your WordPress database on SiteGround
2. how to make changes in your database
3. how to export your WordPress database

The video covers everything I’m going to explain in this article, so give that a shot if you’d prefer to watch instead of read 😉.

SEE ALSO: Why I Switched from WP Engine to SiteGround

WordPress Database Access (with SiteGround) Video

• 1:11 – How to access cPanel
• 1:33 – How to access phpMyAdmin
• 2:27 – How to use phpMyAdmin
• 4:27 – Make a change in your database
• 6:02 – How to export your database

How to Access Your WordPress Database on SiteGround Hosting

The first thing you’ll need to do is login to your SiteGround admin panel.

1. Navigate to ua.siteground.com
2. Enter your email address & password (the email you used when you signed up)
3. Click Sign In

You land on the homepage for your SiteGround account. It should look something like this:

From here, we need to get to our cPanel controls. cPanel is what SiteGround uses to make website management easier. Several other popular, shared web hosts use cPanel as well.

1. Click the My Accounts tab at the top
2. Then click the red button that says Go to cPanel

Access phpMyAdmin in cPanel

cPanel comes preinstalled with phpMyAdmin. phpMyAdmin is software that provides a user interface for you to manage your MySQL database. SiteGround’s WordPress hosting uses MySQL databases, so phpMyAdmin is what you’ll use to make changes to the database.

1. Use the search bar in the left sidebar of cPanel to search for “phpmyadmin”
2. It should be the only result that appears on the right
3. Click phpMyAdmin to open it up

How to Navigate phpMyAdmin

When you first open phpMyAdmin, you’ll see a list of all your databases in the left sidebar. Every database that you have for your entire SiteGround account will be listed here.

Typically, there is one database per website (unless you have a special setup). When you use the installer to create a new WordPress site on SiteGround, you have the option to give your database a name. I recommend you name it something you’ll remember, especially if you plan on hosting multiple sites.

1. Click on the name of one of your WordPress databases
2. Click on Structure at the top
3. Now you’ll see a list of all the tables that make up a default WordPress site

I’ve noted a few additional tables that were added by plugins. Based on which plugins you have installed, you might have even more tables than what you see below.

1. To edit a value in one of your tables, click Browse next to that table

In this example, we’re looking at the wp_options table. This table contains many of your WordPress settings.

You should only edit the values in the option_value column. Do not edit any other columns.

How to Make Changes in your Database

There are two ways to edit a database value in phpMyAdmin:

1. Double-click any row in the option_value column
2. Click the Edit link on the left-hand side of the row

* Double-clicking the value is by far the easiest, and I highly recommend you go that route.

How to Export Your WordPress Database from cPanel/phpMyAdmin

Before I explain this, I need to mention that there are several plugins that can help with this process. Especially if you’re moving your WordPress site from one domain or host to another, you might find it much easier to use a plugin instead.

For simply transferring your entire WordPress site to another host, consider…

• Migrate Guru
• Duplicator
• All-in-One WP Migration

If you still need to export your WordPress database from phpMyAdmin…

1. Make sure you navigate back to your main database screen. You should see the list of all the common WordPress tables.
2. Click the Export button at the top
3. Confirm that the page title says Exporting tables from “XYZ” database
4. Leave the Quick setting enabled
5. Leave it set to the SQL file type
6. Click GO

A .sql file will be saved to your computer. You can then import this file via phpMyAdmin on another WordPress host, or just keep a copy as a backup.

There’s a lot more you can do in terms of editing your WordPress database, but this article is designed for beginners. Please only access your database if you absolutely need to, and if you can have a professional WordPress developer help you out, please seek their advice.

If you’re still considering SiteGround hosting, check out our full SiteGround review here.

Several other WordPress hosts, besides SiteGround, use cPanel for managing sites. Once you access cPanel, the same instructions in this article will apply, so feel free to use them if your host uses cPanel & phpMyAdmin.

As always, if you have any questions, leave me a comment and I’ll try to help out.