hidden/Private/Secret parts of webistes -

[tankman1989]

Does anyone know what the best way would be to have a section of a website that was hidden so that only people who knew how to navigate to it would have access? I'm not looking to password protect as it isn't that secretive but I'd like something like having to press a key combo for either a button to show up or if they could act like hot-key's maybe.

I've thought about making an image the same color as the background and making that a link someplace on the page, but I'd like to see if anyone has any alternative ideas on this.

The reason for this is that the site (or part of it) needs to be public to those who really need access to it and it would be better if people didn't have access to the content of the hidden section, but if they are smart enough to find it, then access isn't all that terrible.

Any ideas on ways this has been done on other sites?

 

[PcTek9]

One way I thought of long ago...

One way to do this would be to have a graphic on the website you click. This graphic would execute code to pop up a window to get a password, in which the password was the name of a directory and extracted to be part of the access path.

Maybe not the best way but still a way. But really it's not that hard to make a secure area that pops up requesting a password. Since you are not worried about it being that secure, i'd use the standard way of getting a pw from a window and comparing that to a coded value stored in the html.

Just remember... it is the web. If someone finds it, they can get in.

 

[Mick]

Your site must have some coloured content? Just style a link colour in your CSS and put it (the link) in an area where the background colour matches exactly - so it's effectively invisible to a passing visitor. This isn't exactly weapons-grade secure, but I'm getting the impression that that doesn't matter too much?

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Commonly there's a hidden hyperlink behind a certain object on the website...such as a logo, or a certain letter. For quite a few of my clients, I'll have their website guy hide a link to their web mail or RWW portal on their website...so it's easy to find for staff, and easily globally changeable.

Once quick example that comes to mind, a Womens Shelter client of mine...on their website, in pink numbers there's a line for "24 hour hotline"...and I had the website guy put a link for their RWW portal behind the "24". Staff were told just to click the pink 24 to get their portal. Instead of having to give out instructions to staff to go to https://remote.blahblah.org/remote

 

[TAPtech]

Or you could do part two of StoneCat's suggestion, which he has yet to realize was a suggestion, and just tell them to go to http://remote.blahblah.com/hiddenurl

Just don't link to that url anywhere on the site, they will need to type it into the browser.

 

[citizensmith]

Just remember... it is the web. If someone finds it, they can get in.

^this. If someone is that interested in your site they would probably read all the page source code too

 

[tankman1989]

Thanks for all the replies! These are some good suggestions and I think I have come up with some ideas as to how this can be done.