Database Access

You can use phpMyAdmin to access your website’s database and run a wide range of operations. This guide will show you how to administer your site’s MySQL database.

Caution Before Accessing Your Database

Database management is an advanced function recommended only for users experienced in MySQL operations. Most website owners never need to access their database. Do not touch your site’s database unless you have a very specific reason.

If you don’t understand what a command does, don’t run it. Running unknown commands without understanding them may lead to your site breaking and losing data. You can test database commands on a staging site first.

You can contact a Happiness Engineer before accessing your database. We are happy to help you determine whether you need to access your database and suggest alternative solutions that do not require database access. We cannot assist you with creating, modifying, running, or debugging database commands.

If a problem arises after you’ve made changes to your database, you can restore a backup of your site.

Access Your Site’s Database

Each WordPress.com website comes pre-configured with one database for use with that site. WordPress.com does not support creating additional databases, connecting one site to another database, or external access to any given site’s database.

To access your website’s database, take the following steps:

1. Visit your site’s dashboard and navigate to Hosting → Overview (or Settings → Hosting Configuration if using the default interface style).
2. Click the Server Settings tab.
3. Scroll down to the “Database access” section.
4. Click the Open phpMyAdmin button. A new tab will open, and you’ll be prompted to click a link to proceed to your database in phpMyAdmin.

You can also access your database through WP-CLI.

Database Actions

PhpMyAdmin is a tool used to access your site’s database and run commands to interact with it. For help with using phpMyAdmin, you can consult the phpMyAdmin documentation.

You can upload .sql files via phpMyAdmin to import database files.

Keep in mind that the size of the database counts against your plan’s storage limit. File size limits and max execution time are set on the server side and cannot be changed.

If you want to export a copy of your database, you can download a copy via your site’s backups (click “Download” for the latest backup and select only “Site database” from the list of files.)