There are two levels of privacy settings in Pressbooks:

• Global privacy setting: Choose whether your entire webbook is Private or Public
• Chapter-level privacy settings: Choose whether an individual chapter displays in the webbook

Each of these settings controls if, when, and how your book is displayed to the public. They can also affect what is visible to book collaborators with certain user roles, which you can read about in more detail in Users & Collaborators.

Global Privacy Settings

The global privacy setting affects whether or not readers can access your webbook on Pressbooks. You can set your book’s global privacy to private or public:

• Private books can only be accessed and viewed by the administrator of a book and users the administrator has added to the book. Setting a book’s global privacy to private overrides chapter-level privacy settings.
• Public books can be viewed by anyone with the URL. When a book’s global privacy is set to public, you can adjust the chapter level privacy to control who sees what content.

There are two places to set the global privacy for your book:

• The Organize page
• The Sharing & Privacy page

The Organize Page

Most authors will visit this page more often. In order to access your global privacy setting here:

1. Click Organize on the left-hand menu of your book’s dashboard
2. Select “Public” or “Private” in the Global Privacy box at the top of the page

Your choice will be immediately reflected in your webbook.

The Sharing & Privacy Page

The privacy settings for your book are centrally controlled on this page. Beyond global book privacy, you’ll see other settings as well, including access to private content and comment activation. To access your privacy setting here:

1. Hover over Settings on the left sidebar menu of your Pressbooks dashboard
2. Click Sharing & Privacy
3. Next to Book Visibility, select “Public” or “Private”
   
4. Click Save Changes

Chapter-level Privacy Settings

Whereas global privacy settings apply to your whole book, you can use chapter-level privacy settings to control who has access to individual chapters within that book. Because global privacy settings take precedence, chapter-level privacy settings will only apply when your the global privacy setting for your book is set to public.

There are two places to control the privacy setting for a chapter:

• The Organize page
• The chapter editor interface

The Organize Page

You can access the chapter-level privacy setting for all chapters at once from the Organize page. To modify this setting:

1. Go to Organize from the left sidebar menu of your book’s dashboard
2. Find the Show in Web column for a specific Part, or for the Front Matter or Back Matter
3. Check the box for each chapter that you want displayed to the public in your webbook

The “Show in Exports” setting works similarly to the “Show in Web” setting described previously. However, instead of hiding or showing the chapter in your webbook, this option includes or excludes a particular chapter from your PDF, EPUB, and other export files.

The Chapter Editor Interface

You can also modify the “Show in Web” and “Show in Exports” settings from inside the chapter editor interface. This may be more convenient for users who are actively editing a chapter rather than modifying all chapter privacy settings at once.

To access this setting:

1. Access a chapter of your book in Pressbooks
2. Find the Status & Visibility box to the right of the chapter editor
3. Select or deselect the “Show in Web” and “Show in Exports” boxes according to your preferences
4. Click Save

Your settings should then be reflected in your public webbook.

Require a Password

You can also use the ‘Require a Password’ setting to limit access to public or private chapters in your webbook. Users may wish to choose this option in provide preview access to certain groups of people. Common uses for password protected content include teaching situations, or content which needs to undergo some form of pre-release or peer review before the chapter is made fully public. 

To add a password to chapter: 

1. 1. Select the chapter you would like to add the password to
   2. In the Status & Visibility menu, make sure “Show in Web” is selected
   3. Select the checkbox for Require a Password 
   4. Type in your chosen password
   5. Click Save (or, for new chapters, Create)
   6. Repeat for each chapter you want password protected

When visitors navigate to a chapter which requires a password in a public book, they will see “Protected: [Chapter Title]” displayed on the page, along with a prompt to enter a password.

If the correct password is entered, the user will have access to that chapter and all others in the book that have the same password. Please note that there is no global option for this feature; you must add password protection to each chapter individually.