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Troubleshooting: Can't load a password-protected, gated, or session-specific page in the Editor

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  2. Troubleshoot other page-loading issues
 
 
This article will help you:
  • Figure out why pages might not load in the Editor
  • Figure out why you can't log into your page within the Editor
  • Load password-protected, Intranet, or gated pages in the Editor
  • Load session-specific content, like a shopping cart, in the Editor

Are you unable to log into a page that's password-protected, session-specific, or behind basic authentication with the Optimizely Editor? If your site is password-protected, behind basic authentication, or requires session-specific information to access certain pages, those pages will not immediately load in the Editor.

Password-protected pages and pages behind basic authentication might include Intranet pages, staging sites behind firewalls, and pages that are gated or available only to logged-in visitors. Pages that require session-specific information to load include shopping carts.

In either case, here's how to give the Optimizely Editor access to the necessary cookies or session-specific information it needs to load the page correctly:

  1. Open your site in a browser tab and navigate to the page you want to edit. To get to the page, you might need to log in, complete a portion of a form or add an item to your cart if you are trying to load a checkout page. Take the exact steps that get you to the exact page that you want to load in the Editor.

  2. Copy the URL of the page.

  3. Load Optimizely in an adjacent browser tab where you had the page open.

  4. Create an experiment using the copied URL of the page you want to test.

Why does this technique work? The Editor will load the page as it would appear if you went directly to the URL in another tab. If you can repeatedly load the page into a separate tab outside of Optimizely, Optimizely should be able to load the page within the Editor. 

What's going on behind the scenes? The key is to allow Optimizely to retrieve session-specific information from the browser. If this information is passed through cookies, using an adjacent tab or the same tab will work. If the session-specific information is passed through Session Storage, you'll need to load the Editor in the same tab where you just loaded your page.


 

 

Note:

In Classic:

This method requires that your Optimizely snippet is installed on the page you are trying to load. If your snippet is not on the page, the Editor will load your page through a proxy, injecting a placeholder snippet. This will cause the page to lose login and session data. If the snippet is on the page and it's still loading through a proxy, you can disable proxy loading by adding the &optimizely_disable_proxy=true parameter to the Optimizely experiment URL in the URL bar.

 
Tip:

In Classic and X:

If you're sure that your page can load in the same browser tab (or an adjacent one), but your page still doesn’t load, check the top of the Optimizely editor for banner that indicates that you are "compatibility mode". Compatibility mode will prevent the solution above from working as expected. To resolve compatibility mode issues, follow the steps listed in this article. 

Other solutions

If you still cannot see the page after following these instructions (for example, your cart is still empty or you aren't logged in on the page in the Editor), the session data on your site may not be stored in cookies or session storage. This means the session data is not available from within the Editor. If you cannot use Interactive Mode to navigate to the page you wish to edit, you'll need one of these two alternate options to create variation code:

  • Option 1: Separately host a static HTML version of the page and load it into the Editor. You can then make changes to that page using the Visual Editor. This option will require help from a developer.

  • Option 2: If you are familiar with jQuery, use the developer console in your browser to make changes and see them reflected on your live page. Then, copy that jQuery into the experiment's variation code. 

These two options work because the Editor acts as a template for the changes you want make, but does not dictate your experiment targeting. URL Targeting dictates exactly where the experiment will run. 

This issue is common in single-page applications (SPAs). If your site is built on a SPA framework, check out our articles on SPAs in Optimizely X Web and Classic for more considerations to watch for when testing on your site.

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