It's a very, very good idea to change the URL path of your Magento Admin panel for security purposes. Hackers can easily find where to log in if your site back-end is simply yoursite.com/admin, but if you change it to yoursite.com/goodluck they'll have a much harder time.
You can make the change yourself by following a few short steps...
- DON'T CHANGE THIS SETTING IN YOUR MAGENTO ADMIN PANEL! Magento has an option under System > Configuration > Advanced > Admin > Admin Base URL to change your Admin URL, but don't touch it. The necessary changes have to be made to files on your server and if you change this setting in the Admin Panel you can lock yourself out of your system.
- Edit your local.xml file. You can usually find it on your server under /app/etc/. Look for a piece of thte code that reads "<frontName><![CDATA[admin]]></frontName>" and replace "admin" with whatever new path you'd like.
- Clear your cache manually. Navigate to the /var/cache/ directory and delete all the files in that folder. Don't worry, this just clears your cache and wont cause any problems.
- You're set! Navigate to your new admin URL and you'll see the usual login screen. If you try to get to your old URL you should get a 404.
