The home page and viewers
Each site has a home page at the root of its page hostname, for example https://watch.example.com/. It shows a poster and a title for each video, with a search field and a sort menu. The home page is private by default. Only viewers who sign in see it, and other people get a sign-in page.
The demo site has a public home page.
Who sees the home page
| Person | Sees |
|---|---|
| A viewer who signs in | Every video, public and unlisted. An unlisted video has the Unlisted icon. |
| Any other person, when the home page is public | The public videos. A Sign In link is at the top. |
| Any other person, when the home page is not public | A sign-in page. They can find a video only from its link. |
Nobody needs to sign in to watch a video from its link.
Settings of the home page
Open Site Settings ▸ Site. The Home Page section has these settings. Click Save to apply them.
- Public home page: shows the public videos to every person. Kitset asks before it saves this change, because anyone can then find every public video of the site.
- Site title: the heading of the home page, and the name of the site in Kitset and in the link above each player. Without a title, the site uses its page hostname.
- Search: shows the search field.
- Default sort: Newest First, Oldest First or Title A–Z. A person can choose a different order on the page.
- Poster size: Small, Medium or Large.
Open Home Page opens the home page in your browser.
The search finds the words in the titles and the descriptions. It ignores case and accents, so “creme” finds “Crème”. The page works with no JavaScript, and a search or an order has its own address that a person can share.
The home page uses the built-in layout and the colours of your template. It does not use a custom template.
Viewers
A viewer is a person whom you invite to the home page. A viewer signs in with a passkey and sees the unlisted videos there too.
A viewer does not get access to a video that they could not watch before. Anyone with the link of a video can watch it, and viewers only find the unlisted videos more easily.
Invite a viewer
- Open Site Settings ▸ Viewers, and click Invite Viewer….
- Enter the name of the viewer, and click Make Link.
- Click Copy Link, and send the link to the viewer.
Kitset shows the link only once. Anyone with the link can make the passkey of this viewer, so send it only to that person. The link works one time, for 7 days.
The viewer opens the link and makes a passkey for your page hostname, with their phone, their computer or a password manager. Then they can sign in at any time on the home page.
Manage viewers
The list shows each viewer with the date of the invite and a state: Invited, with the date that the link expires, Link expired, or Has a passkey.
- New Link makes a new link for the viewer. For example, a viewer needs one when their link expired, or for a passkey on a new device. The current passkey of the viewer stops working at once, and the viewer is signed out.
- Remove… removes the viewer. Their passkey and their link stop working at once.
Each viewer has one passkey. A passkey that syncs, for example in iCloud Keychain or in a password manager, works on each device of the viewer.
Why passkeys
A passkey needs no password, so a viewer has nothing to remember, and nothing can leak from your site. It needs no account with another company, and no setup in the Cloudflare dashboard.
A passkey belongs to the page hostname of your site. Your site has no other recovery: when a viewer loses their passkey, make a new link for them.
The invites do not need the Cloudflare Account API Token, so any Mac of the site can invite viewers.