Visibility

You can restrict the visibility of a website so it can only be viewed by content editors (i.e. people set up with user roles on the site). When this option is set, attempts to view the site at its address return a 'Website unavailable' message (below).

Web output: Restricting view to content editors results in the 'Website unavailable' message to non-logged-in users

In order to view the site, content editors will need to login. The login screen can be reached by replacing the path /websiteunavailable with /user.

When the 'Hide site from search engines' option is checked, an instruction is created which requests search engines to not index the site. The onus is on the search engine to observe this request and the instruction is generally obeyed by all major search engines.

The option is checked by default when a site provisioned. Unchecking the option will allow search engines to crawl the site and index it. In order to stand the best chance of the site being indexed in its most complete and representative form, we strongly advise waiting until you are ready to launch the site before unchecking the option.

Find out more about launching a site

Oxford-only access control

If you want to make pages on your site available only to individuals with Oxford Single Sign-On (SSO) IDs, you can use the site change request form, accessed via the 'Request a change' link, to request that access control is enabled on your site. This option can be requested at any time after site creation.

NB: As stated in the Oxford Mosaic Web CMS Platform Terms of Usage, Mosaic is designated to hold Public information only: it is not managed as a repository suitable for storing Internal or Sensitive content. The oxonly option is provided solely to enable customisation of the site navigation experience of users, to help ensure they see only content relevant to them; it is NOT to ‘Secure’ content. Mosaic should only be used to store Public content.

Note that the level of access restriction is at only one level: any member of the University of Oxford (including students) will be able to login to view the page. Mosaic does not provide the granular permissions and security auditing tools used by Intranets. It can, however, be used to create engaging and user-friendly web sites containing public information, providing navigation and signposting to internal information stored in SharePoint.

Access restriction configuration at page-level

Once enabled, an 'Access control' tab will be visible to logged in users on each page next to the 'View', 'Edit', and 'Revisions' tabs.

Output on a Mosaic site: 'Access control' tab amongst the tabs visible to logged-in users

The Access Controls are applied at page-level, meaning the access control needs to be applied to each page you wish to restrict to Oxford users only. Once a page has been restricted to Oxford SSO users only, non-logged-in users attempting to visit the page will see an 'Access Denied' message, which will include a login button, allowing Oxford SSO users to access the content.

Output on a Mosaic site: 'Access denied'/login screen displayed to non-logged-in users attempting to view SSO-only content

Once an Oxford SSO user has logged in for the first time, they will not be required to log in to any Oxonly pages they subsequently visit.

Visibility of links to Oxonly content

Once Oxford-only content has been enabled on your site, a checkbox for controlling whether or not non-logged-in users are able to see links to content restricted to Oxford users only.

If this option is checked, links to content restricted to Oxford users only will appear with a locked padlock item. Once a user has logged in, the padlock icons will appear unlocked.

Output on a Mosaic site: Links to Oxonly content viewed by non-logged-in users

Output on a Mosaic site: Links to Oxonly content viewed by a logged-in user