When you need to change the site email address in WordPress, an email will automatically be sent to the new email address. That’s usually fine, but sometimes emails don’t send or they’re not received. Without confirming the email you won’t be able to update the address. How do you get around that? You could edit the database directly, but that’s not something many users want to do themselves.

I had a user in this situation recently and thought up a workaround for them. You’ll need to install and activate the WP Mail Logging plugin. It keeps a record of all the emails sent by WordPress.

After the plugin is active on your site, go to Settings > General in your dashboard and enter a new email in the “Email Address” field and save your changes.

Now click on the WP Mail Log item on the left-hand side of your dashboard. It’s near the bottom. You’ll see the email that WordPress just sent there. Click on the view button in the “Message” column.

This will show you the email that was sent to the updated email address. In that email, there will be a URL that you would click to confirm the email normally. It’ll look something like this and you’ll need to copy it out and paste it into a new browser tab.

https://yoursite.com/wp-admin/options.php?adminhash=16d6ab1b03asd8c9dc4118bc98xksj267c9b7

You’ll be prompted to log in. After that, you’ll be confirmed. You can expand on this idea to make other confirmations on your site via email without ever opening up your email app. If you have other uses for this technique, let us know in the comments below!

Photo from Marius Christensen