Question

Error 403 - Messaging for Restricted Content

3 years ago
19 January 2021
2 replies
80 views

+1

Kgastaldo
Champion
166 replies

We’re running into an issue with restricted content and only having 1 error message. We restrict content in two ways - you must have an account or you must have a custom role (customer, partner, etc.), so when someone reaches a restricted page and get the 403 error. There are 2 issues:

1 - They have the correct permissions, but aren’t logged in.

2 - They are logged in, but don’t have the correct permissions.

I’ve been playing with the phrase of the error message, but turns out people don’t really read them. They tend to email me and say they don’t have access. The majority of the time, they simply aren’t logged in.

It would be nice if there were 2 error message - one that recognized when someone wasn’t logged in and another for those that are.

Anyone else have this issue and figured a way around it?

2 replies

Shane1
Shoshin
119 replies
3 years ago
17 March 2021

Hi @Kgastaldo, sorry for the delayed reply :slight_smile:

With the 403 error page there is the same title phrase for users who are logged in and don’t have access, and for those who aren’t logged in.

But there are two different body phrases. The ‘error.403.guest’ phrase is only shown to users not logged into the community, so this phrase should tell the users that they need to log in to be able to access the content. While the ‘error.403’ phase is shown to users who are logged into the community but don’t have access to that particular section of the community.

So you could consider making those phrases more clear to the users for what they should do or why they don’t have access. You could for instance consider adding a more prominent button saying login to the phrase for the users who aren’t logged in. I’m also a fan of adding images to the 403 error phrases to make them a bit friendlier. This is a good example from Personio: