Not everything you create is meant for the whole Internet. Lab notes, draft papers, internal resources, meeting materials — some content is for your group only. Today, we're introducing Owlstown Site Members, a new way to manage who belongs to your site and what they can access.

What Site Members can do

Site Members are the people in your group — your lab, your team, your organization. They get two kinds of special access to your site:

1. View members-only content. You can restrict your entire site or individual pages to members only. Anyone else sees a login prompt.
2. Edit your site. Members you assign as editors can add and update content using your site's editing tools.

Restricting access to your site

Until now, your site was either fully public or locked behind a shared Sitewide Password — one password circulating in email or chats, with no way to revoke access for someone who leaves.

Site Members replaces the shared password with something better: your members' existing Owlstown accounts.

When a visitor arrives at a protected page or site, they see a login prompt. One click takes them to Owlstown to sign in. Once signed in, they're sent back to exactly where they were — no extra setup, no new account, no password to share.

If someone leaves your lab, you remove them from your member list. Their access ends immediately.

What you can protect:

The whole site. Open the Members panel in your editor, go to the Settings tab, and toggle Require member login to access whole site. Every page on your site will be restricted to members.

Individual pages. For more granular control, open the page settings for any page, go to Sharing, and toggle Require member login to view this page. The rest of your site stays public; only that page is gated.

A typical setup for a research lab

Say you run a lab group site. Your publications and about page are public. But you want to share lab protocols, a reading list for your group meetings, or feedback on students' draft work — none of which belongs on the open web.

Here's how you'd set it up:

1. Make sure your lab members have Owlstown accounts and are listed as members of your site.
2. Open the page you want to protect, go to Sharing, and enable Require member login.
3. That's it. The page is now invisible to anyone who isn't signed in as a member.

Members who are already logged into Owlstown will pass through in one click. Everyone else sees a login prompt.

Site Members is available now

Site Members is available on all sites with the Owlstown Ace Premium Plan. If you're already using Owlstown for your lab or research group, head to your Members panel to try it out.