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Two things decide who can open a member site: its visibility and its shares. Visibility is a setting on the site. Shares are a list of audiences you add to it. This page covers both, who can open a site in each case, and what a share grants and doesn’t.

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Choose a visibility

A site is private or public. A new site is private. You set it when you add the site or change it. A company admin sets a company site’s visibility with Change a member site. The change takes effect as soon as you save it. Visibility applies only once a site is published. A draft site or a taken-down site isn’t open to members whatever its visibility says. See Know draft and published.

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Know who can open a site

The answer depends on who is asking and on the site’s state.
  • A guest is never told whether a site exists. A guest who asks for anything but a published public site is sent to sign in, and a missing site and a private site look the same.
  • A signed-in member outside the audience gets not found. The answer is the same as for a site that doesn’t exist.
  • A draft and a taken-down site open for no member. The owner and company admins included. Preview a draft instead. See Preview the draft.
  • A company site’s owner is every company admin. A member’s site has one owner, the member who built it. An admin who isn’t the owner opens a member’s published private site as an admin.
  • A company admin is a signed-in member whose user is an admin of the company. Admin access to a site’s files and pages is separate: see Build with the APIs.
  • A site whose owner is no longer an active member opens only for company admins. That holds whether it is public or private.
  • A branch is private and unshareable. Only its owner and company admins open it.
A site opens at /accounts/<site-handle> on your company’s own domain. See what a member site is.

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Serve a company site to your members

A company site is built by your company’s admins for your members. Admins create and edit it; members are its audience. It isn’t an admins-only site.
  • Every member: make it public. Guests open it too.
  • Some members, by role or country: keep it private and share it with a segment: a member type, a country, or both. A member a segment matches opens it; any other member gets not found. Add one share per segment you want to serve, because shares combine. This replaces the countries and member types of theme member sites, which are deprecated. See Share a site.
  • Named members: share it with a member, the same way. A downline share isn’t available for a company site, because a company admin can’t make one.
  • Members can’t hide it: mark it required with Change a member site. A member it reaches can’t remove a required company site from their account menu. See Sites home.
A share a company admin makes isn’t limited by the company’s member messaging policy. See Follow the messaging policy.

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Share a site

A share names one audience and a permission. Add as many as you need. They combine, and a member who matches several shares gets the highest permission. A member’s country is their user’s country, else the company’s default country. A segment matches a blank field to any value. For a member’s site, the member who owns it shares it. For a company site, a company admin shares it. Sharing a member’s site is the member’s to do, so an admin can’t share it.

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Use the shares API

A few rules to know:
  • Sharing the same audience twice writes nothing. The request returns the share that exists, with its permission unchanged. Change the permission with Change a share’s permission.
  • A share changes only its permission. To change who it names, delete it and add another.
  • A share never names an email address. It names a member, a member type or a country.
  • You can’t share with yourself or with a member of another company. Both are refused, and so is a member type or country the company doesn’t have.
  • An admin can list and delete the shares of any site in the company. An admin can’t create or change the shares of a member’s site.
  • A deleted share closes access on the member’s next request. Another share that still matches keeps it open.

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Follow the messaging policy

A member shares the way a member messages. The company’s Member messaging policy limits whom a member can share with, and a share a member made is checked against it each time someone opens the site, not only when the share is made.
  • A company without a saved policy behaves as all_members.
  • A share the policy no longer allows stops working. Narrowing the policy closes the access of those shares with nobody rewriting them, and widening it brings them back.
  • A share a company admin made isn’t limited by the policy. It matches under every setting.
  • A member who isn’t in the sharer’s Team Graph gets nothing from that share. A member or sharer with no place in the graph is in no Team Graph.
Search the share targets tells a member which audiences their policy allows. It allows 30 requests a minute, counted together with the messaging recipient search.

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Know what a share grants

A share is a way in. It grants:
  • Opening a private site. A member the share matches opens a published private site.
  • Copying, with copy permission. A member can copy a site they can open when a share with copy matches them. A member who can open a site but has no copy share is refused. See Copy a site.
  • A place in the member’s menu. A published site a share reaches a member for appears in that member’s account menu. See Sites home.
A share doesn’t grant:
  • Changes. A share holder can’t edit, publish, delete or share the site. Only the owner can, and an admin can take it down.
  • The owner’s data. A share holder, and every other visitor, gets no member data from the site’s scripts. Only the signed-in owner of a member’s site does. See Know who gets data.
  • Featuring or pinning. A company that features a site shares it with no one, and a member who pins a site gets no access from the pin.
  • Access to a draft. A share on a draft or taken-down site opens nothing until the site is published.
  • Anything beyond the policy. A share reaches only the members the sharer’s messaging policy lets it reach.
A member can remove a shared site from their own menu. That changes what their menu lists. It never changes who can open the site by its address.