When publishing with Shorthand hosting, we offer three options to set publishing visibility so you can decide who can view your published story.
Public: visible to everyone.
Anyone with the link: visible to those you share with.
Restricted access (password protected): visible to those with access.
Note:
Anyone with the link and Restricted access Publishing visibility are only available for stories published with Shorthand hosting.
Restricted access publishing is only available on some plans. Please check your plan to ensure it's included, or contact support if you have any queries or issues.
Public
Your story will be visible to everyone and it will be indexed by search engines. This is the default option.
Anyone with the link
Your story will only be visible to those you share the link with. The URL of the story is not editable and includes a UUID (Universally Unique Identifier), which is a randomised series of letters, numbers and dashes, so it is difficult to guess or find. We also add a <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> tag to the head of the story to prevent your story from appearing in search engine results.
If you use Shorthand’s Story Embed to embed a page that has been published as “Anyone with the link”, the page at the URL you publish to through Shorthand (e.g. https://mystories.shorthandstories.com/c9de7911-6k15-4033-l9ec-178ced4203df/index.html) will include the noindex meta tag, however, Shorthand will not add the meta tag to the host page that you’re embedding the Shorthand page into, which gives you full control over that from your host CMS/website. This means that the page at the Shorthand published URL should not show in search engine results, but if you also want to hide the embed host page you must manage that from your CMS/website.
Restricted access
Note: Restricted access publishing is only available on some plans. Please check your plan to ensure it's included, or contact support if you have any queries or issues.
Your story will only be visible to those you grant access to. To grant access, you will enter recipient email addresses and each address will be sent a link to authenticate using a one-time-password before they can view the story. You can also revoke access to a story.
Grant access
Select Restricted access from the visibility options. In the publish panel you will see a field where you can add email addresses of those you would like to have access to view the story. You can enter multiple emails at once by comma separating them.
Note: If the check box labelled Send the URL to access list recipients via Shorthand is selected, then all email addresses added to the access list will be sent an access email from Shorthand.
If the check box is not selected, then the published story link should be manually copied and sent to the intended recipients.
Once you’ve added recipient emails, they will appear in the Access granted tab. You can also revoke access from this tab.
Revoke access
In the Access granted tab, each email address with access has a button on the right to revoke access. You can also click the button to revoke access for all. Emails with revoked access will appear in the Access revoked tab. Each email with revoked access has a button on the right to add them back to the access granted list. You can also click the button to add all to the access list.
Schedule un-publish
From the publish panel, you can optionally set a date for your story to automatically un-publish. Simply choose a date from the date-picker field to set the un-publish date.
Manage access after the story is published
You can continue to grant or revoke access once your story is published from the Publish panel or the Share panel. You can also resend the story to recipients from the Share panel.
Share the restricted access story
After the story is published, the recipients of the published story link will be able to access the story link and authenticate with their email address. Once they have authenticated, they will be sent a one-time-password to use to view the story.
If you have added new recipients via the Share panel and had selected Send the URL to access list recipients via Shorthand when publishing the story, you can click the button on the right of the email to resend the story to each new recipient or resend to all.
If you have made changes to your story and republished, existing recipients will see the updates in their links to the story.
How to set publishing visibility
When you are in the editor, click ‘Publish’ and the publish panel will appear and you will see a setting for ‘Visibility’. By default it is set to ‘Public’ so everyone can view the published story. To change the option, click on ‘Public’ and you will see a dropdown menu showing both options. Simply click on the option you would like for your published story.
View story visibility status on dashboard
Once your story is published, the story card on the dashboard will indicate whether the story has been published with visibility set to Public, Anyone with the link, or Restricted access.
You can also use the status to filter stories by publish visibility.
