Why are my sites password protected? What’s Privacy Mode for?

Privacy Mode exists for a couple of reasons. The most common reason is that the site is a demo site, and is password protected until it’s paid for. But beyond that, most of the time, you don’t want users viewing your site before you’re ready, and you want to prevent Google from crawling the site before it goes live. Otherwise, your SEO score may suffer.

While the most common reasons for Privacy Mode has to do with demo sites, you can still activate Privacy Mode on any site on Flywheel any time you like. This can be especially useful when you’re still working on a site, but don’t want the changes to be public just yet.

Managing Privacy Mode in Flywheel is super easy, and is handled from the site page in the Flywheel control panel. On the right-hand side you’ll see a section marked “Privacy Mode”:

In this box you can easily change the username or password for a site, or turn Privacy Mode ON and OFF.

When a user visits a site on Flywheel that has Privacy Mode enabled, they will be presented with a username and password field:

To gain access to the site, enter the username and password for Privacy Mode into this box and click “Log In.”