Skip to main content

Make Certain Pages Private (Visibility Settings)

To keep your site live while hiding specific pages from the public, use the Visibility setting.

Available on: All plans (Legacy plans: Starter plan and above)

"noindex" vs. "Private" settings

To prevent a specific page from appearing in search results, you can either set the page to "noindex" or set the page to "Private."

Item

Page with noindex

Page with visibility set to "Private"

Search results

Not shown

Not shown

Direct URL access

Accessible

Not accessible — 404 page is shown

Use case

SEO adjustments

Make a page completely private

Examples

  • Pages with a lot of duplicate content from other pages

  • Pages that only contain a contact form

  • 404 pages

  • Pages currently being edited

  • Pages that aren't ready to publish yet

Help article

Set a page to noindex

This article

Setting page visibility

With the "Visibility" feature, you can keep your site published while making specific pages private.

This is handy when you want to temporarily hide a page, or when you're working on a redesign while your site is live.

Note: The following actions aren't currently supported in Studio.Design:

  • Restricting access by setting a password on a per-page basis.

  • Publishing or updating a site on a per-page basis. (When you publish or update a site, edits to all pages in the project are applied.)

Each page's visibility can be set to either "Everyone" or "Private."

When set to "Everyone"

Pages set to "Everyone" can be viewed by all visitors on the published site.

When set to "Private"

Pages set to "Private" don't appear on the published site. Instead, the 404 page (or the top page, if no 404 page is set) is shown. However, you can still preview these pages using Live Preview.

Note: Private settings for modals and dynamic modals

  • Link settings are disabled, so clicking a linked area won't open the modal or dynamic modal.

  • If "Use path" is enabled and you've shared a modal URL in the "m=path-name" format (e.g., http://example.com/event/?m=a), accessing that URL directly won't show the 404 page. Instead, the page containing the hidden modal is displayed. Example of what visitors will see:

    Example of what's displayed when 'Use path' is enabled and a modal URL in the 'm=path-name' format (e.g., <a href="http://example.com/event/?m=a" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">http://example.com/event/?m=a</a>) is accessed directly.

    How to set visibility

    1. Open the page settings panel. With no element (box) selected, open the right panel and go to the [Page Settings] tab for the page you want to update.

    2. Turn on [Make page private].

    3. Once you've made the change, publish or update your site to apply the changes. Visibility settings won't take effect on the published site until you do this.


      For private pages, a private page icon appears next to the page name in the layers panel.

    4. Visit the page's public URL to confirm that the 404 page or top page is displayed.

    Note: If you see the error "No pages available to publish. The process has been canceled."

    This happens when all pages in the project have their visibility set to [Private]. Create a page to publish, change its visibility to [Everyone], and then try publishing your site again.

    Test site Test Archive

Related Articles
Page type: 404 page
Page Types
Set a page to noindex
Sitemap
Redirect Pages (Setting Up 301 Redirects)
Did this answer your question?