Login is required for staged sites [18.12.2008]

In a recent commit, we made it mandatory for anyone accessing the public part of a site on the staging server to log in. Previously you only had to log in to access the admin area of a staged site.

This change is for you and your clients' benefit: it protects the public site from prying eyes — search engines, spammers, lucky guessers — while you prepare the design and content for launch.

However, this does mean that you'll need to create a user account for anyone who you want to view the site. If they shouldn't have access to the admin area, we advise that you create a special role — say 'Observer'? — that has no ticked capabilities, and assign it to these users. Simple.

The other implication of this change is that staged sites are no longer aggressively cached as they are in production, so they'll be marginally slower as a result. Don't worry, it'll all be zippy when you go live.