Every page has an access level: who can open it. Access is the portal’s master switch: while a page is a draft, only the administrator sees it, and as soon as access is opened, the page appears for staff — or even outside on the internet.
The three access levels
- Draft — only the portal administrator sees it. Readers do not find the page in the tree, nor by its direct address.
- For staff — opens for any signed-in user. For everyone else the page looks non-existent.
- Public — available to everyone without signing in, including from the outside at
/p/(see Public Site).
A new page is always a draft
When the agent creates a page, it starts as a draft. That is why an unfinished page cannot be shown to readers by accident — at first only the administrator sees it. Publishing is exactly the change of access: as soon as the agent switches the level to “for staff” or “public”, the page appears for the right audience. There is no separate “publish” button, because access is what publishes.
What an ordinary reader sees
The reader sees in the tree only the pages they have access to. Drafts never make the list, and cannot be opened by direct address either. Type an unavailable page’s address by hand, and the portal answers the same way as for a non-existent address — identically and without hints. From that answer it is impossible to tell whether the page exists at all: that matters when a draft is prepared in advance and the plans should not leak early.
The agent’s service messages — checks, issue marks — are not shown to readers either. Only the administrator sees them.
The public site menu
A public page can additionally be given a place in the site menu. Four things are set:
- Show in menu — on or off. A page with the item switched off still opens at its address; it is just not visible in the menu.
- Order — the place the page takes among the other menu items.
- Its own label — how the item is named in the menu. When no label is set, the page title is used.
- Menu depth — one level or two, with a dropdown. Set once for the whole site in the home page’s settings.
Next: what the site looks like from the outside — in the Public Site section; how one page serves many addresses — in Templates & Variables; what gets checked on a page — in Page Validation.