When you install Magento the admin access directory is set to site_admin. This makes it very easy for a hacker to find the admin access area.

To change this to make it more difficult navigate to /app/etc using your favorite ftp program or your access panel.

Then download local.xml.

Open local.xml in a text editor such as textpad, wordpad or even notepad.

Look for the following usually around line 53

<adminhtml>
<args>
<frontName><![CDATA[site_admin]]></frontName>
</args>
</adminhtml>

Change site_admin to whatever you need.

Note** Before you upload it login to the admin panel and disable the cache. You can find this under system/cache management.

Or using ftp delete everything in /var/cache

Re upload the changed local.xml. file to /app/etc.

Log back in using your new directory name and re enable the cache. You can find this under system/cache management. If you deleted everything in the the var/cache folder you can skip this step.

That’s it.