Creating a password gateway page

Design help CMS
1

Hello everyone! First time poster – I hope I’m not breaking any rules/best practice.

I’m building a website for rich multimedia press releases. I’d like to set up a password-protected gateway for accessing a release (i.e a CMS collection entry) that is under embargo.

My ideal implementation of this would be one single page (mysite.com/embargo) that contains a console that when you enter a password brings you to the corresponding CMS collection page linked to that password. Without the password, the page is locked if accessed directly.

I assume some kind of Zapier/Integromat set up is in order. But was hoping to pool some ideas.

Dave

2

Hi @davelee :wave: welcome!

You can use site or page level password protection, more info here: Project and page passwords | Webflow University

You can also join the membership beta, more info here: Create a Membership website | Webflow

One of those solutions sound like it could work for you, but those are the only native Webflow options you have.

Do be aware, though… adding any assets (PDF’s, images, etc…) to the Webflow asset manager or the CMS (for the most part) is not private even if you add those assets behind password protected pages.

So you’d need a third part solution to host those assets if they need to be protected as well.

But if it’s just a text press release then you’ll be good to go.

3

Hi Chris – thank you for your response.

I don’t think either of those options would work for this use case, unfortunately. Page level protection only works with static pages – my use case is for protecting CMS collection-powered pages.

I’ve signed up to the Membership beta but one of the core bits of UI for this project is that the readers (i.e. grumpy journalists like me) would never need to be logged in or put in any other effort other than putting in the keyword.

The user journey would look like thus:

4

Ah, gotcha!

In that case, yes… your initial thought of using Make (Integromat) was the correct approach :smile:

This won’t be uber secure, but it’ll most likely be good enough…

The /embargo page will need a simple, native Webflow form on a static page, allowing them to enter their secret code.

You’ll want to use Make (Integromat) for this. If you don’t have an account, their free tier will do the trick.

If the secret code is always the same here’s a screencast for you:

It gives you most of what you need, but not all of it.

Instead of creating a new CMS item as shown in the screencast, you’ll need to hard code the CMS item ID you want to send them to.

In your case:

/releases/[release_that_has_secretstory_password_attached]

  • /releases would be the CMS Collection.

  • /[release_that_has_secretstory_password_attached] would be the Item ID.

Anyone can access the url with the Item ID, but those Item ID’s are long and random, so it’s difficult to guess.

Also, add the secret code they enter to a filter after your Webhooks modules (from the screencast above) to check for that.

On the other hand…

If you want the secret code to be unique for each journalist you’ll want to use something called a lookup table. Here’s a quick tutorial on that:

You’ll need to inject that into your workflow.

If this is all too much you’ll need to find a pre-canned solution that you can bolt into Webflow. I don’t know of any off hand.

Otherwise, feel free to ask question, I’ve got answers :smiley:

5

Hm - I’m worried I may have overcomplicated things.

Is there not a way I can create a form that goes like this:

User submits passkey → automation looks up table to see which CMS item the passkey corresponds to → directs user to that CMS Item page ?

I realise it means the “secret” page will be live anyway – but for MVP’s sake I can live with that for now (until I hire a real developer…)

6

No, I don’t think it’s you that’s overcomplicated it. Webflow is just a bit limited with what it can do from this perspective (in other ways it’s the most flexible tool on the market).

It’s unfortunate but Webflow only allows you to lookup a CMS item by it’s item ID. It’s strange & unintuitive, I know. That’s why we use lookup tables.

There is a another approach. Using Webflow Logic (Automate and connect your website | Webflow Logic) it’s the first time they’ve allowed us to search any field in the CMS, but… you can’t redirect a user to a page from Logic, only Make (Integromat) can do this.

It sounds like these options may not work for you (understandable). The other options that I’m aware of would be custom Javascript code, or an existing service that integrates with Webflow. Wish I could recommend something to you for the latter.

If there’s any way you can do this with copy/pasting to static pages, seems like the rest is simple.

Sorry that’s not more helpful.

7

You’ve been incredibly helpful! Thanks for taking the time.

I’ve signed up to the Logic beta. I think a combo of Logic and Make will solve this. Need to get my head around both of them first, though. All part of the fun.

8

I’m on the logic beta now, so now hoping I can combine Logic → Make to make (lol) this work. What might be a good starting point?

9

I’d say start scrolling through all the thread titles and see if there is anything that already overlaps with Logic → Make. If not, post a new thread about how to do it. I believe the suggestion will be to use the Logic HTTP action to fire off a Webhook into Make.

10

@davelee did you solve your problem?