3. Web based user interface

After Heritrix has been launched from the command line, the web based user interface (WUI) becomes accessible.

The URI to access the WUI is printed on the text console from which the program was launched (typically http://<host>:8080/admin/).

The WUI is password protected. There is no default login for access; one must be specified using either the '-a'/'--admin' command-line option at startup or by setting the 'heritrix.cmdline.admin' system property. The currently valid username and password combination will be printed out to the console, along with the access URL for the WUI, at startup.

The WUI can be accessed via any web browser. While we've endeavoured to make certain that it functions in all recent browsers, Mozilla 5 or newer is recommended. IE 6 or newer should also work without problems.

The initial login page takes the username/password combination discussed above. Logins will time out after a period of non-use.

Caution

By default, communication with the WUI is not done over an encrypted HTTPS connection! Passwords will be submitted over the network in plain text, so you should take additional steps to protect your crawler administrative interface from unauthorized access, as described in the Section 2.3, “Security Considerations” section.