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How to create a hidden article with access via link?

  • 7 June 2024
  • 3 replies
  • 44 views

Hi everyone,

 

I'm looking for a way to publish an article on our community that remains hidden from the general public but can be accessed by customers who have a direct link. Does anyone know how this can be achieved?

 

Thanks for your help!

 

Luc

3 replies

Kenneth R
Userlevel 6
Badge +4

Hey @LucTango - articles usually live within a community or knowledge base category, and the permissions for the article are inherited by the category.  So you can have an article in a public category or you can publish it in a category with limited permissions.  Those permissions could be based on a custom role, or you can set the category to only be visible for members who are logged-in.  The tricky thing is that if an article is open to anyone with a link, that will mean that it’s also open to search and is browsable.  

I did have one idea for a workaround - do you think a custom page might work for your use case?  Custom pages don’t appear within the community taxonomy or in search results.  So if you don’t add navigation links to it in some form, it’s basically invisible unless you have a direct link.  You could have the article content within an HTML widget on the page.

LucTango

Hi @Kenneth R,

Thank you for your explanation!

I understand the first solution, but I would like to avoid the friction of requiring our customers to log in. Most of our article readership comes from unlogged customers.

I would like to get more details on the second solution involving custom pages. Specifically, could you (or is there an article?) provide a step-by-step guide on how to create a custom page, add an HTML widget with the article content, and manage the visibility so that it's accessible only via a direct link?

Thanks again for your help!

Kenneth R
Userlevel 6
Badge +4

Hi @LucTango - the basics of getting started with custom pages can be found here:

Would you need some of your own HTML for the content to look clean. This isn’t a use case for custom pages that has come up before, so I’m afraid I don’t have a template for that (making it look like an article).  But it should be fairly straightforward.

Also, technically the page would be open to everyone rather than restricted to those with a direct link, but the reason I named this as a potential solution is that in practice the page won’t be easily findable if you don’t promote it with links or navigation elements.  I’m not sure if this is a good solution for you - it’s just the only option I could think of to get close to achieving what you described.  :)

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