Hi Andreas. Thanks for your reply. I use Outlook 365 as the mail client, and set the email address in Website X5 to an @me.com address. @me.com is an apple address, but the same thing happens if I set it to my business email of @pc-pro.co.  So there is an issue. Also, it would be less messy if instead of showing the code for the validation email, it was encapsuled in a big button that said Validate.  That would be less intimadating, and may prevent the email from being deemed spam by the email client receiving the email.

I appreciate the widget can be added to the header.  The issue is that the homepage is still exposed before logging in.  I have information in the footer that I don't want seen by whoever lands there. Hence the reason for wanting site wide securuity rather that just locked pages. If the homepage locked, that would solve my issue. Or if it was possible to have different headers and footers on different pages, that too would work in my case.  But nether seem possible.

Someone suggested I could lock the web site directory on the site server. That is likely true, but I do not know how to do this. I assume I would need console access and have a script that runs from the directory. I don't know how to code that.  And I further assume who ever enters would all have to use the same password.  So not the best solution in this situation.

Andreas, I have tried several different email domains like my business, apple, my isp etc.  All of the validation emails end up in the junk/spam box.

Stefano, your comment was useful. I added a bit on your idea to get it to work the way I had in mind.  Thoughts?

Creating a site wide login page on WebsiteX5 and WebsiteX5 Pro

WebsiteX5 does not have a way to easily “push a button” and get site wide lock down behind a login. To get this, you must lock each page you don’t want someone who is not logged in to have access to. But, you are unable to lock the homepage.  So if there is nothing on the homepage you don’t care if anyone can see, you can avoid doing anything else. As soon as the visitor clicks on a locked page, they will be presented with a login page.

But if there is stuff on the homepage you want to protect access to, there are two options. If the confidential information is only in the footer, you can turn the Footer off for the Homepage. See Option 1.

Option 1 (Turn off footer for homepage only.)

By design the Homepage cannot be locked. But Footers can be turned off for this unlocked page if desired.  

If you have confidential information in the Footer only, you can do so by going into the Properties section for the homepage in Step 3

The next page selected that is locked from the menu in the header will prompt a login/register screen.  The user must register once only and after that they can login.

If you also have confidential data in the Header, the process becomes more complex, and option 2 must be used.

Option 2 (Side wide lockdown behind a login)

The procedure below has you emulate a home page and hide and rename the original one.  Let’s get started.

    1. Hide the Home Page using the Sitemap Creation page.

1. Rename the Home Page to Landing Page using the Rename button on the Sitemap Creation Page.

1. Go into the Landing Page properties from the Sitemap Creation page. Check the Page Title box and change the page name to Landing Page. Uncheck the Page Title box. Under tag Description, put this page’s purpose in (ie. Login Page).

1. Create a new Level under Home Page on the Map. Call the new level Home Page. Hide it on the Sitemap Creation page. This prevents it from showing up on the Menu.
2. Create a new Page under the new level. Label it Home Page. Lock it on the Sitemap Creation page.
3. Move on the information from the original Home Page (now called the Landing Page) to the new Home Page. One problem I ran into was the Simple Separator on the original Home Page gets its image from the WebSite Icon box on the Website Settings page. It also gets certain properties from the Simple Separator (size in particular). Since these properties do not work on a regular page such as the newly created Home Page, you have to replace the simple Separator with an image on the page.
4. From the Map, click on the new Home Page. Populate the image used in the Simple Separator into the new Home Page image by clicking on the image icon. This opens the Image Object Page.

From the Image Object page, click Display and set it as follows:

1. Go Back to the Landing Page. In Properties, go to Graphic.  Select Header and Hide for this page.  Do the same for Footer. This prevents the menu from showing up and prevents breaking out of this hidden page.
2. Create a text box instructing users to login/register. Create a button to allow them to get to the login/register page. Double click on the button and change its properties as follows:

Since this button links to the new Home Page, and since the new Home Page is locked, it brings up the WebsiteX5 login/register page, imlogin.php?loginstatus=-3.

1. That is it.

I pasted this from a Word .doc but it stripped the screen captures for each step and and renumbered the points. Everywhere it starts at 1 again had a screen capture removed from my document. So you do not get the full message unfortunately.

One idea. This would all be much simplier if the entry page did more than just detecting screen resolution and language. Given it is the landing page by default, why not make it a site wide login page. Once logged in using your imlogin.php?loginstatus=-3, it would drop you on the home page. This way, the using has a simple way of doing this that is more intuitive.

One other thing. When you turn the footer off as you suggest, it leaves the background colour of the footer on the left and right side of the screen.  (What you refer to as extended view) I would have preferred it to have been removed as well given it is part of the footer.

Hello Gregory

I understand the process you made, but it is unclear to me whether the original workaround I provided was in fact helpful to you.

As of now, we did not receive much feedback about needing a full website lockdown due to the ways you can effectively already achieve something like this, like the one I offered or keeping WebSite X5 out of the loop entirely and lock the website with username and password configured on the hosting

However, if you so wish, I will turn the topic private so that the matter of eventually making this quicker and easier can be kept under consideration

Thank you

Stefano

Your suggestion as is would not work as there is other information on the home page that I wanted to keep private. 

But you got me thinking about a different way to get to what worked. It was just a ton of extra steps. And as I mentioned, heading the footer did not clear the background from the left and right side extensions. So it looks a little funny. But other than looks, it works.

The other thing about the validation email; I have tried five different emails, all with different domains. I always get them going to the junk/spam mail folder. I know you said you use the host email to send the mail out. In my case, the site is hosted by Go Daddy. They are a pretty large organization. Not sure why their email would get rated as spam.

Hello Gregory

I can only advise contacting them directly. As I mentioned, the software isn't in charge of the actual process of sending the email. It merely builds it and provides it to the emailing server to be sent out

Technically, if such mail is being sent to Spam, the emailing server should be aware of the reason for this. Are you using SMTP o the basic PHPMailer? For example, using SMTP is a known way to improve reliability

Get in touch with your hosting about this first and keep me posted here after

Thank you

Stefano

Good morning Stefano.  I am using PHPMailer as it says it in preferred in Website X5.  I tried per your suggestion to use SMTP, BUT, I could not make it send the validation email. The program adds a field when I change from PHP to SMTP for an smtp server and I assume that it must be the smtp server of the website host. 

They use smtp.office365.com as the smtp server with encryption using StartTLS. Website X5 does not seem to support StartTLS, so I assume this is why the validation email did not send.  But, I do not know this for sure. So I changed it back to PHPMailer for now.

Stefano, I got boith PHPMailer and SMTP to work without having the validation emails end up as spam.  For the PHPMailer, the ISP added a text file to my profile that basically says that mail sent from this website is not spam. Don't know how it works, but it does.

And for SMTP, the parameters for smtp server and port are differnt than those used in the smtp server for Outlook365. Effectively, the mail Website X5 creates is relayed on rather than run through their smtp server. They gave me the paramters to make this work. And now it does. See attached .jpg.

Hello Gregory

If I understand correctly, the issue seems fixed by a change of configuration and credentials by the hosting. Is this correct?

In this case, we can assume the situation is solved, or would you like further clarification on any matter specifically?

I remain available here for you, keep me posted if necessary

Thank you

Stefano

Your assumption is correct. Everything is now working.

Thank you very much for your help. Being new to website building, I had no idea where to start solving this issue. Your counsel pointed me the the right direction. I thank you and very much appreciate your guidance.