Domain Access: A simple way to protect pages on your website from prying eyes!
Internet privacy is a hot topic in the news these days. While the web was created fundamentally to share all information with everyone, its increased use in daily life has meant that this idealistic view of information access does not always fit exactly with people’s requirements. While websites can be constructed with ‘hidden’ pages, with secret links intended only for certain people, these secret links can now be shared so easily with anyone and once they escape they are as good as public. With systems like Google mail choosing to index links found even in private emails - its hard work restricting access to certain pages of a website even if one tries to.
Another example where protection might legitimately be desired is the launch of a new website - site owners will not want their new site to be viewed while its under construction. Preventing Google and other online agents deviously indexing links to your site before it’s ready is a constant threat one should take seriously if one is concerned with not having information publicised on the web.
Fortunately, professional web developers have a few tools in their toolboxes to handle this threat to some extent. One of the simplest and most effective methods for protecting pages and content on your website is something called ‘Domain Access’.
In essence, Domain Access allows you to protect certain pages or areas of your site by requiring a username and password before accessing a particular page or content such as a document. This means that, even if the link to this hidden page or document gets out into the web, or is indexed by Google and people try to access it - they will not be able to actually view it unless they also have the correct username and password to access it, despite having the link.
For a professional web developer, it is a relatively simple task to set up this kind of protection.
So, while many elements on the Internet are continually conspiring to make your private content public - Domain Access is a relatively simple way to provide a good degree of protection against many of the potential threats out there in the wild west of the web.
If you are curious about further technical information on how Domain Access can actually be created, please refer to the following resources below.
WARNING: Technical proficiency is required to understand these articles!
