How to hide or password-protect pages in Squarespace
Use a page password when you want to protect one page, and use Site Availability when you want to hide or password-protect the entire site. The steps are broadly the same on Squarespace 7.0 and 7.1, with 7.0 mainly adding some index-page nuance.
Squarespace gives you two different privacy controls, and they solve different problems:
- Page password for one page.
- Site Availability for the whole site.
For a single page, open the page settings, enter a password, and save — see Squarespace’s guide to controlling who can access your site’s pages. For the entire site, go to Site Availability and choose Private or Password Protected — see publish or hide your site and site-wide passwords.
That distinction matters because a page password protects only that page, while Site Availability changes access for the whole website.
How to do it in Squarespace 7.0 vs 7.1
On both versions, page-level protection is straightforward: open the Pages panel, open that page’s settings, scroll to Password, add the password, and save. Visitors then hit a lock screen before they can view the page.
For the whole site, use the Site Availability panel instead. Choose Public if the site should be visible to everyone, Password Protected if anyone with one shared password can enter, or Private if only site owners and contributors with login permissions should get in.
The main 7.0 wrinkle is index pages. Squarespace notes that on 7.0 you can password-protect the main index, and whether protected sub-pages display in that index depends on the index style.
When you need a plugin / what solves this easier
This is not really a plugin problem. Native Squarespace settings already handle page passwords and whole-site visibility well enough for most use cases.
Where people get tripped up is expecting page passwords to act like user accounts. They do not. Everyone shares the same password for that page, and you cannot assign different passwords to different visitors.
Common gotchas
- Page passwords are case-sensitive and limited to 30 characters.
- Contributors with viewer permissions still need the password.
- Password-protected pages can still show up in navigation unless you move them to Not linked.
- If a page was public before, search results can linger for a while even after you protect it.
- Summary Blocks can still display items from a password-protected collection page, but visitors cannot click through without the password.
Related
- Which Squarespace plan do I need to use plugins and code injection?
- How do I add FAQ schema to a Squarespace page?
- How do I improve SEO on my Squarespace site?
Have a correction or a Squarespace tip we missed? Email info@squarespacewebsites.com
See the full Squarespace Plugins — General product page on squarewebsites.org for live pricing, demos, and setup details.
Sources: squarewebsites.org · squarewebsites.org · support.squarespace.com · support.squarespace.com · support.squarespace.com