Currently, a password closes the entire Publish website, with no public access to anything at all.
Need: A public-facing page providing information about the site including, for example, instructions on how to access the password by becoming a member of a particular online community.
Benefits: The landing page can be indexed and found by search, so the site has a web presence even though it is protected.
Use case: I have a large repository of notes documenting the history of my work which I would like to make available to paid subscribers of my Substack. I would like people to be able to find this website through other paths, learn about what’s behind the gate, and be motivated to sign up for a subscription.
Solution: I have no idea how this might work, technically. Perhaps one solution would be to have the password popup be optionally expanded to include the contents of a “landing page” note, specified in the password section of the Publish interface. Or just allow the home page to display (chosen by clicking a box in the Publish interface) and show the password popup on every other site URL as usual.
After a quick research. This is the info/concept discovered. Enjoy
Based on the information available, it appears that setting up a public-facing landing page separate from the private content in Obsidian Publish is feasible, particularly by using custom domains or subdomains. You can set up a custom domain or subdomain for your Obsidian Publish site using CloudFlare, which allows you to manage your domain’s DNS. This setup can be done either using a root domain (e.g., mysite.com) or a subdomain (e.g., notes.mysite.com). Additionally, you can set up SSL/TLS for your custom domain using your own web server. If you already host a website under your domain or subdomain, you can use this to load your Obsidian Publish site under a specific URL path, effectively creating a separate landing page while keeping the main content private.
For your specific use case, you could create a main landing page (e.g., example.com) that is publicly accessible and provides information about your site, including how to access the private content. The private content (e.g., vault.example.com) would then be accessible only to those who have the required access, such as paid subscribers of your Substack.
Thank you @beto – I’ll see if I can make it work that way. I’ve already got my vault hosted under a .org custom domain using CloudFlare. I’ve got more standard content on a WordPress .com, and am planning to do the Substack on a .com subdomain.
I like having both the .org and the .com at the top of the search results, but thinking about it again after your suggestion, maybe it makes more sense for me to merge the vault into notes.domain.com and provide the info about it on the main page.
I appreciate your taking the time to lay that solution out for me to reconsider!
