Forgot the site administrator password in Contribute

It is more often than we may believe that we forget administrator password of many of our affairs be it server or site administration. And then we do what not to get hold of someone to help us recover the password or bypass the password asking prompt or have some hacking approach to hack our own system. Recently I faced this when I had to remove contribute related settings on my website so that I do not face the nagging dreamweaver prompt whether I wish to enable all contribute related settings while editing my site in dreamweaver. Had tough time in finding the solution but finally came across the following which did the work.

If you forget the password assigned to the Contribute administrator role, you can reset the password by deleting the shared settings file from the website and creating a new shared settings file.

Note: If you delete the shared settings file, all the roles you have previously created are lost; you must set up those permissions again.

To delete the shared settings file:

1. Connect to the server, either by mounting it on your desktop or by logging in to it (using an FTP client, telnet, SSH, or similar software).

   Note: You can't perform this procedure from within a web browser.

2. On the server, open the root folder of your Contribute website, and then open the _mm folder that's inside the root folder.

   A typical Windows directory path for the _mm folder might be:

   \\myServer\wwwroot\mySite\_mm

   A typical UNIX directory path for the _mm folder might be:

   /<path_to_the_web_server_doc_root/mySite/_mm/

   The shared settings file is an XML file (labeled contribute.xml) in the _mm folder.

3. Delete the shared settings file.
4. Using Contribute, select Edit > My Connection (Windows) or Contribute > My Connection (Macintosh), select the website whose shared settings file you deleted, and click Edit.
5. Re-establish a connection to the site.
6. When you re-define the website connection, select Edit > Administer Websites (Windows) or Contribute > Administer Websites (Macintosh) and administer the website to which you are connected.

   Contribute will prompt you to become the administrator of the website.

7. Select Set Administrator Password to become the administrator for the site, and reset the administrator password.