Logging into dotCMS

Last Updated: Feb 19, 2024
documentation for the dotCMS Content Management System

Login URL

To sign in to the dotCMS back end, type the URL of the home page of your site, and add /dotAdmin to the end of the URL. For example, to sign in to the site http://demo.dotcms.com, you would type the URL http://demo.dotcms.com/dotAdmin.

Address bar illustrating dotAdmin position.

In some cases, you may also browse a front-end home page, and then sign in directly to that page by adding /edit after the domain. For example, http://demo.dotcms.com/edit. However, this approach may vary in effectiveness depending upon which slugs or redirects are already in use for that site.

Address bar illustrating edit approach.

User Name and Password

When the authentication page displays, you will be prompted for your user name and password:

Authentication screen.

Depending on how your System Administrator has configured your dotCMS installation, your username will be either an email address or a user id.

When you first install dotCMS, it will include starter site for you. The default login for the starter site is admin@dotcms.com. The initial password will be a random string displayed in the server log. It is recommended to change this after first logging in.

A default admin password can also be configured through the DOT_INITIAL_ADMIN_PASSWORD environment variable.

Language Selection

The dotCMS back end can be translated into different languages, and dotCMS ships with translations for the following languages:

  • Dutch (nl)
  • English (en)
  • Finnish (fi)
  • French (fr)
  • German (de)
  • Italian (it)
  • Spanish (Latin America) (es)
  • Russian (ru)
  • Chinese (Simplified) (zh)

When you sign in to dotCMS, the language defaults to the default language configured for your dotCMS system. You may change the language used to display the backend by selecting the language in the upper-right corner of the login window:

authentication screen with language selector shown.

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