Secure Access To Technical Content - Fluid Topics - Latest

Category
How To
Audience
public
Version
Latest

Overview

As a content delivery platform, Fluid Topics' core capabilities include the following:

  • Access content using the turnkey portal, an API platform, or web integrations.
  • Manage content and control who can access it in the Knowledge Hub.

Secure content with Fluid Topics

Business need

By controlling access to content, content administrators can achieve the following outcomes and more:

  • Make part of the documentation publicly accessible and limit the rest to customers.
  • Make all content related to product support public but restrict access to other content based on user roles.
  • Limit access to previews about upcoming features to partners and resellers.
  • Share exclusive information about a premium feature with subscribers only.

Overview of solution

The solution depends on which of the following kinds of content exist for the portal in question:

  • Only public content.
  • Only restricted content.
  • A mix of public and restricted content.

The following topic suggests strategies for each use case.

Procedure

When configuring content access rules, the best strategy is the one that corresponds to the content accessibility plan in place for a portal. The following use cases provide details for each context.

Only public content

In this context:

  • Content is not secured.
  • Users do not have to authenticate.
  • Content is visible to all users.
  • Search engines can access all content.

Configure settings as follows:

  1. In the Access rules administration interface, set the default group to Public. No rules are required.
  2. In the Authentication administration interface, clear the checkbox requiring authentication.
  3. In the Web Search Engines administration interface, enable crawl.

Authenticated users and SEO-compliant content

In this context:

  • Content is not secured.
  • Users must authenticate.
  • Search engines can index all content.

Configure settings as follows:

  1. In the Access rules administration interface, set the default group to Public. No rules are required.
  2. In the Authentication administration interface, select the checkbox requiring authentication.
  3. In the Web Search Engines administration interface, enable crawl.

One disadvantage of this configuration is that any bot or human pretending to be a bot can access the content.

Partially restricted content

In this context:

  • Access rules secure content.
  • Some of the content is accessible without authentication, while some requires authentication.
  • Search engines can access the content accessible without authentication but not content requiring authentication.

Configure settings as follows:

  1. In the Access rules administration interface, set the default group to Authenticated.
  2. Create a rule for the Public metadata value.
  3. In the Authentication administration interface, clear the checkbox requiring authentication.
  4. In the Web Search Engines administration interface, enable crawl.

Pre-releasing and testing content

In this context:

  • Access rules secure content.
  • Users must authenticate.
  • Content is hidden from search engines.

Configure settings as follows:

  1. In the Access rules administration interface, set the default group to Authenticated.
  2. In the Authentication administration interface, select the checkbox requiring authentication.
  3. In the Web Search Engines administration interface, disable crawl.

Strictly restricted content with multiple access levels

In this context:

  • Access rules secure content.
  • Content is only accessible to users who have the right to access it.
  • Content is hidden from search engines.

Configure settings as follows:

  1. Configure document metadata based on the groups of users who will be able to access different sets of content (see example in the following topic).
  2. In the Manage users administration interface, create one or more user groups (see example in following topic).
  3. In the Access rules administration interface, create one or more rules for the configured user group(s) (see example in the following topic).
  4. Set the default group to Authenticated.
  5. In the Authentication administration interface, select the checkbox requiring authentication.
  6. In the Web Search Engines administration interface, disable crawl.

Example of configuring multiple access levels

An administrator wants to configure multiple content access levels for a portal containing the following documents:

  • My product for the general public
  • My product for integrators

The administrator proceeds as follows:

  1. Add the metadata audience: integrators to the document My product for integrators.
  2. Create the integrators group and add all users who are integrators to it.
  3. Create an access rule to restrict documents with the metadata audience: integrators to the group integrators.
  4. Define the default group as public so that both integrators and non-integrators can see the document My product for the general public.