EyesOnly (supplied with Password Protect 6)

Details

Here we're going to give show you what is behind the EyesOnly curtain so you'll have a better idea of how to employ it to protect your pages. The first step is to find this Object on the Goodies tab of the Insert Bar, or in the Insert/Valleywebdesigns menu. When the UserInterface shown below opens, you CAN simply click on OK to apply EyesOnly to your page and you'd be done. You need not change any of the Advanced Options at all. But for best results...

eyeysonly ui

EyesOnly employs 2 different redirection techniques:

1) Always added is a javascript (Your page is protected even if javascript and CSS and meta redirects are disabled. See below.)

2) This page can use ServerSideIncludes: Optionally, and even better, the other technique uses ServerSideIncludes. This code can only be added to SSI parsed pages.

A savvy user might prevent SSI controlled redirection by disabling Meta Redirects, but the page they see will be blank! hah! This is one of several ways that this script is far superior to the simpler ones available elsewhere: The SSI option will protect your privacy even if the savvy user has disabled meta redirects and javascript and css ! (Also see notes and issues #2 below.)

[But does your server support SSIs? See the note about our server test above.]

And what if your server does not support SSIs and so you can not check the SSI box? Well, in that case EyesOnly does a different sneaky thing to protect your page:

It adds a layer to hide content - We discovered that the redirection to another webpage, mediated by number (1) above, occurs so quickly on a PC that the content of your protected page is not ever seen by the unauthorized user. But in some Mac browsers, users would get to see your private page for 1-2 seconds while the browser contemplates our command to redirect. So, if you are not able to use the SSI option above, EyesOnly hides your page content by adding a layer with a mock "404 File can not be found" message. Savvy users may realize that the real document is hidden under that layer, but most users will not. This mock message will appear even if the user disables javascript (so the redirection never happens.) This is one of several ways that this script is far superior to the simpler ones available elsewhere: Mac users will not get to view your protected page for those 1-2 seconds, and NO user will get to view your protected page even if javascript and CSS are disabled entirely. Oh, one down side of this? Netscape 4 users, even authorized ones, will never see anything but the mock 404 message - so you lose 0.3% of users.

Change redirection page from homepage to. By default, attempts at non-authorized access are redirected by EyesOnly to your homepage, in which case you need enter nothing here. However you may choose to specify an alternate redirection page here. This may have a document-relative (e.g. "../afolder/apage.htm") or root-relative path (e.g. "/afolder/apage.htm") , or even be a fully formed webaddress (e.g. "http://www.forexample.com/afolder/apage.htm")

Also allow linking to your page from. By default, EyesOnly allows the page to be opened only from pages within this website, in which case you need enter nothing here. On very rare occasions, you may also want to allow linking to this page from another website. If so, then enter the url of that other website.(e.g. "http://www.forexample.com")

Any changes you make to the Advanced Options are "sticky", that is they are remembered and entered into the UserInterface for you the next time you want to add EyesOnly to a page on your site.

Now see a few important notes about EyesOnly...

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