Display private resources

Resources can be made private so that they are only carefully displayed to the public and made accessible online for certain constituents. A good example is a batch of documents for your board of trustees or galleries of images of students that can only be displayed internally to other students. There is a connection between Resources and Galleries that this article helps to understand.  

In this Article

• What are private resources?
• What are private galleries?
• Display a private file
• Manage Gallery privacy settings

What are private resources?

Private resources are exactly like public resources, except that they are not shared with other users by default. Here are some things to keep in mind when you use private resources: 

1. Private resources are visible only to the user who uploaded them (and any site admins with admin level permission to the folder).
2. Private resources must be placed into a private gallery with custom permission settings before they can be shared. 
3. Private resources cannot be as easily moved into Public folders as other resource media are. They must be re-uploaded into Resources as Public files.

What are private galleries? 

Private galleries exist in the Galleries area of Resources. Their purpose is to gather a batch of resources together for display in a specific way and/or on a specific page.

To add media into a private gallery: 

1. Click +Create Private Gallery or click into an existing gallery. 
2. Click +Private Resource to add a resource into a private gallery. 
   
3. Be sure to click Update in the bottom right corner to save changes.

Display a private file

Here's how to display a private file on your website:

1. Upload it to the “Private” section of Resources. The Private Resources section works just like the Public section: you can create folders to organize the files stored there, and put files into galleries in order to display them on the site. The big distinction is that Public resources are public - that is, they’re always accessible to everybody - while Private resources are restricted to only be visible to selected users.
2. Add your Private Resource into a Private Gallery

Manage Gallery privacy settings

A private gallery can be displayed on a site using a Composer Resource, Image, or Video element. First, it's necessary to set the Privacy for that gallery. From the three-dot Action Menu for the gallery, choose Settings.

Then choose the Privacy tab. From here, you can select whether only admins can view the contents of the gallery, or some or all constituents.

When you select "Constituents Only," the gallery will be visible to anyone who has a portal account and is logged into the site. To restrict that further, choose from the groups in the list that appears. 

It's a good idea to display private resources on a page that is already restricted to the role or groups you have chosen for the gallery privacy. Otherwise, anyone who is not authorized to see the resource who visits a page with the resource will see the message "You are not authorized to access this resource."