What is "private mode"?

In this article, you will learn how to use private mode on your website. This feature allows you to disable the translations displayed for your visitors when revising your website.

1) When setting up Weglot, all added languages are set to "public" by default. Visitors can access the translated pages.

When logged into the Weglot Dashboard, you can see the translated pages in private Mode. However, visitors won't be able to see translated pages until you reactivate public mode. This feature is useful for editing the translations and seeing how they look on your website before publishing changes.

2) Switch to private mode

Go to your Weglot Dashboard > Projects > Select a project > Translations > Languages

Click on the "Options" button on your chosen language and switch off the "Make public" option:

This way, you can set private mode for a specific language(s) or for all of them.

After refreshing your page, you will see a little eye on the right of your language pair.

A text will be shown when overring the eye:

⚠️ Note that if all languages are set to private mode, the Language Switcher will not be displayed on your website while in public mode.

3) Display the translations while in private mode

When you set a language pair to "private", you can still display the translation by adding the query:

?weglot-private=1 at the end of the URL in your browser's address bar (then hit Enter to reload the page). Please don't use a space or any other character between your URL and the query, just add it directly after your URL. For example, it should look like this: yourwebsite.com?weglot-private=1

The language switcher will also be displayed if you had set all your languages to "private."

You can also use the button next to the switcher that will directly redirect you to the private version of the website.

4) Switching back to public mode

Switch the public mode option back on. Visitors will then be able to see the translations for the selected language again.