Public reading

A space can be opened to the world, so that anyone can read it without an account: a product manual for your customers, say, or a handbook for volunteers. Readers see the space in Tesria itself, always up to date, and search engines can find its pages.

Because it puts pages on the internet, it takes two separate switches, both in Administration, so nothing becomes public by accident. They are for administrators, unless your Tesria’s roles give them to someone else.

Step 1: Allow public spaces for your Tesria

In Admin, Settings (Admin is in the top bar; in a narrower window it is under More, and on a phone in the ☰ menu), turn on Allow public spaces. This alone publishes nothing: it allows spaces to be published. If your Tesria can be reached from the internet, go through the readiness checklist in docs/security.md first. See Settings (administration).

Step 2: Publish the space

In Admin, Spaces (Admin is in the top bar; in a narrower window it is under More, and on a phone in the ☰ menu), choose Publish beside the space. Tesria says exactly how many pages and attachments will become readable before it asks you to confirm.

Both steps may ask for your password again, if you have not signed in recently. Every administrator gets a security alert whenever a space is published or withdrawn, so nobody can do it unnoticed.

What readers see

• The public spaces, each with a read-only page tree, and every published page in them that has no restriction.

• Export buttons for PDF, HTML and Markdown, where the space allows them.

• Search, over the public spaces only.

• Comments, only if you allow them: tick comments beside the space in Admin, Spaces (Admin is in the top bar; in a narrower window it is under More, and on a phone in the ☰ menu). Readers can then read the comments but not add any.

• A Sign in button, for people who do have an account.

Restricted pages, drafts, the trash and page history are never public. Search engines find the public pages through the sitemap Tesria keeps for them.

Taking it back

• Withdraw beside a space in Admin, Spaces (Admin is in the top bar; in a narrower window it is under More, and on a phone in the ☰ menu) makes it private again. Readers without an account lose access within a minute.

• Turning off Allow public spaces hides every public space at once, and remembers which ones they were, for when it is turned on again.

See Spaces (administration) for the rest of that page.