Manual talk:$wgMinimalPasswordLength

Effects of changing password length
I'm looking to change the password length for an existing Wiki and wondered if this will have a negative effect on existing users who have passwords with fewer characters. If so, can this be managed? --Guy Grannum 12:00, 16 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Yeah, that's a valid question. I would think that the change affects only new registrations, however I am not sure. I will ask at the support desk for confirmation. --&#91;&#91;kgh&#93;&#93; (talk) 19:30, 3 April 2014 (UTC)
 * $wgMinimalPasswordLength is checked when setting a new password. The impact on existing users is that they - when they try to set a new password - will have to set a password fitting the new minimal length. That means: They will no longer be able to set a password, which is shorter than $wgMinimalPasswordLength; that means they possibly have to use a longer password than they had before.
 * The paranoid admin might now ask: "How can I force all my users to make their password fit to the new minimal length?" As the actual passwords are saved in an encoded form, you cannot say how long the according password is. So the only way to go would be to invalidate all passwords of all users. You have to judge whether this is worth the hassle; after all this would affect really all users - even those, who already had a password with a fitting length set, which I personally find rather annoying. --88.130.65.73 22:13, 3 April 2014 (UTC)