Coming Soon sites – Invite documentation confusion
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Howdy! I’m looking for some clarification on this.
In the Privacy support document https://wordpress.com/support/settings/privacy-settings/ it says:
Coming Soon. A new site is set to Coming Soon until you launch it. Visitors will see a coming soon landing page, whereas you and visitors you have approved will see the full site.
and “visitors you have approved” links to https://wordpress.com/support/user-roles/#viewer where it says
Viewer
Viewers apply only to sites that are set to private. Viewers are users who can only view private sites. Like Followers, Viewers do not have any editing privileges. All they can do is simply read the private site they were invited to and leave comments on it (only if you have enabled comments).
However, if you go to the Users dashboard>Invites tab on a site marked “Coming Soon”, it displays these User Role invite options:
Role- Administrator-Full power over the site: can invite people, modify the site settings, etc.
- Editor-Has access to all posts and pages.
- Author-Can write, upload photos to, edit, and publish their own posts.
- Contributor-Can write and edit their own posts but can’t publish them.
- Follower-Can read and comment on posts and pages.
(Hoping I didn’t mess up the tags!)
If someone is then invited as a Follower on a site marked “Coming Soon”, as a Follower they can only read any published posts in the Reader, but cannot view the site itself.
So it seems there’s an inconsistency here between what is written in the Privacy/User Role support docs and what actually appears in the Users>Invite dashboard when a site is set to “Coming Soon”.
Thanks for clearing up my confusion.
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi there!
It looks like we linked to the wrong place on the Privacy Settings page, it should be:
https://wordpress.com/support/user-roles/#list-of-user-roles
I’ve already updated that so it should be correct now.
Thanks for letting us know!
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Hi helper-heroponriki,
Thanks for making the changes but it appears there is one more change required to avoid confusion.
If you will go here then under “Coming Soon” there is written:
A new site is set to Coming Soon until you launch it. Visitors will see a coming soon landing page, whereas you and visitors you have approved will see the full site.
Since you have redirected “visitors you have approved” here, it sounds like user role with Follower/Subscriber can also view the site when it is in Coming Soon mode. But in my testing, it appears, that they can’t see the site, and users with the role of Administrator, Editor, Author, and Contributor can only see a site that has coming soon mode.
What is the option?
We can change the sentence here from:
A new site is set to Coming Soon until you launch it. Visitors will see a coming soon landing page, whereas you and visitors you have approved will see the full site.
To:
A new site is set to Coming Soon until you launch it. Visitors will see a coming soon landing page, whereas you and visitors you have approved (except follower/subscriber) will see the full site.
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Since you have redirected “visitors you have approved” here, it sounds like user role with Follower/Subscriber can also view the site when it is in Coming Soon mode.
On the User Role page, those user roles can only see public or private sites respectively. A site that is “coming soon” is neither of those; so there would be no expectation those roles would be able to access a site that hasn’t been launched yet.
I hope that clarifies things!
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Hello again,
so there would be no expectation those roles would be able to access a site that hasn’t been launched yet.
However, they can, as @amiteshg93 found in his testing (thanks for that!). The other user roles (Admin, Editor, Author and Contributor) can see the site, regardless. And that seems to be what is implied in the “whereas you and visitors you have approved will see the full site” in the Privacy support doc.
And it makes sense that they should be able to do so if they are there to help create the site prior to launching it to the Public.
So some wording needs to be changed somewhere; I’m just not sure where and what. :)
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Hello there,
However, they can, as @amiteshg93 found in his testing (thanks for that!). The other user roles (Admin, Editor, Author and Contributor) can see the site, regardless. And that seems to be what is implied in the “whereas you and visitors you have approved will see the full site” in the Privacy support doc.
To check, are you saying that those who’ve been added to the site as admins should still be able to see the site even if it’s set as coming soon mode?
If yes, I can relate to that expectation, and this is probably feedback we can pass on.
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Hi @aleone89 Not should be able to see the Coming Soon site, but are currently able to do so, alongside Editors, Authors and Contributors. Every user role, BUT Follower. :) Again, it makes sense to me that this is how it should work on Coming Soon sites.
However, it is possible to invite Followers from the Users>Invite dashboard on Coming Soon sites; it’s just not clear that invited Followers cannot see the site. (After all, they’ve been invited and approved as well.)
Perhaps that sentence in the Privacy doc
Visitors will see a coming soon landing page, whereas you and visitors you have approved will see the full site.
should be amended to read,
Visitors will see a coming soon landing page, whereas you and Admins, Editors, Contributors and Authors you have invited and approved will see the full site
That’s all I have. Cheers.
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Hi there,
Definitely appreciate your insight here. We’ll pass your suggestions along to the Document Support team for review.
Thanks!
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