Hiep Le
Mar 17, 2022
visibility 3667
star star star star star
(1 votes)

Create admin account without given access to CMS

Ever encountered a situation you are asked to take over a project to maintain it, you are given database backup & source codes but someone forgot to tell you the admin account to login CMS?

Fret not. If you are using CMS version 11 or ealier, edit your web.config to allow anonymous access to the CMS by updating the following sections:

1. Under <location path="EPiServer">

update from <deny users="*" /> to <allow users="*" />

2. Under <location path="EPiServer/CMS/admin">

update from <deny users="*" /> to <allow users="*" />

You now can access the CMS at http://your-site/EPiServer/CMS/Admin/Default.aspx

Go in and create your admin account and you're all set!

Mar 17, 2022

Comments

Scott Reed
Scott Reed Mar 17, 2022 11:49 AM

I would suggest updating the intro to this just to explain this is for pre CMS 12. As in current version which is .NET 5 there is no web config 

Hiep Le
Hiep Le Mar 18, 2022 04:44 AM

Thanks for your insight Scott. Updated :)

Devsina
Devsina Oct 17, 2023 02:15 PM

Thank you, saved me sometime!

Hiep Le
Hiep Le Oct 19, 2023 06:42 AM

Devsina, it's great that it could help you!

error Please login to comment.
Latest blogs
Surviving a Dirty Feed. Part 3: Error Handling and Event Batching

Committing a 250,000-row Optimizely catalog import row by row, returning a per-row failure report, and coalescing catalog events into one per batch.

Stanisław Szołkowski | Oct 16, 2026 |

Building UI Extensions for Optimizely SaaS CMS

Introduction Developers have been extending the functionality of Optimizely PaaS CMS for years using addons built in C# and deployed as NuGet...

Mark Stott | Oct 15, 2026

Cheapskate AI Translator: Because Translation Should Not Require a Second Mortgage

There is a particular kind of software project that begins with a detailed architecture document, a product roadmap, and a carefully assembled...

Linh Doan Cuu | Oct 15, 2026

Computed Fields in CMS 13 Content Contracts with Optimizely Graph

Content Contracts in Optimizely CMS 13 allow different content types to share a common structure when querying Optimizely Graph. But what if the...

Mardy | Oct 14, 2026