The Sitecore Login Screen

In this article we will take a look at the first page an editor will meet in Sitecore, the login screen.

Written by: Jimmi Lyhne Andersen

Fri, Jul 16 2010

When using Sitecore, you can access the login page by entering sitecore after the url of your website like this:
http://hostname/sitecore

The login screen will look something like the following depending on your version of Sitecore.

The main part of the login screen consists of four parts.

1. The login panel
2. The login options
3. System information
4. The Sitecore pane (Browser Notes)

The Login panel

This part is where the user enters her user name and password and clicks the login button to log into Sitecore.

The default user name for Sitecore is "admin" with "b" as password. This login should however be changed as the first thing when installing a new Sitecore solution.
If you want to avoid having to login again, check the remember checkbox, and you will be automatically logged into sitecore the next time you enter the http://hostname/sitecore url in your browser.

Forgot Your Password

If you forgot your password, click the "Forgot Your Password" link in the bottom of the login panel. This will take you to the following page.

To receive a new password by email enter the user domain (in most cases the user domain is sitecore) followed by a backslash and your user name. It is important to enter the user domain, if you don't Sitecore will just display the error message "We were unable to access your information. Please try again."

Change Your Password

To change your password, click the "Change Password" link. This will take you to following page.

Enter your current password in the Password field, followed by your new password in the New Password and Confirm New Password fields, and click the Change Password button to change your password.

The Login Options

Below the login panel is the login options. To view the options, click the Options link. In older versions of Sitecore, this was done by clicking Advanced in the red bar or Advanced Options... in the bottom of the page.

When unfolded, the options look like this

This gives the user the possibility to chose which user interface and user interface language she wants to view Sitecore in. From Sitecore 6 it is possible to login by double clicking the preferred user interface.

System information

The system information gives you information about the license used and the which version of Sitecore is installed.

The Sitecore Pane

This box will tell you which browser you are using and which of the Sitecore user interfaces is supported for that browser.

In the first screen shot of this article i am using Internet Explorer 8, which enables me to use all user interfaces. This is also the case for Internet Explorer 6 and 7.

If you use the Mozilla Firefox browser you will get the following information.

As you can see, it is not possible to use the desktop user interface in firefox. Actually the Sitecore desktop is only accessible in Internet explorer. But most browsers lets you edit your content through the content editor or the page editor.

Final notes

In the web.config it is possible to change the "Welcome to Sitecore" title to anything you want.
The Sitecore pane is an iframe. By default this iframe is showing the browser notes, but it is possible through the web.config to show any page you want in this box. This could for example provide a way to communicate news and other information to the editors of a large website.

About the author:

Jimmi Lyhne Andersen

Jimmi Lyhne is the co-founder of LearnSitecore. He is currently employed by Pentia A/S where he is working as a Senior Systems Consultant and Lead Developer on large municipal websites.
Jimmi is a certified Sitecore developer and a Microsoft Certified Professional Developer (MCPD).
He has a bachelors degree in Computer Science and in Mathematics from the University of Copenhagen.
Prior to his work as a software developer, Jimmi worked for five years in the financial sector.