Let someone else in

What this page is for. Give a developer, a helper or a visitor a way into the panel without handing over your own login.

You need

• The panel open, on the Security page.

There are two ways, and they are not the same thing.

Never give anyone your own username and password. Both ways below end on their own, and both can be ended by you in one click.

Temporary logins

A temporary login is a second login with its own name and its own password. It can run the site — deploy code, restart a service, read a log, look at the database pages — and it cannot touch anything that decides who gets in, and cannot take your data away with it.

Create one

1. Open Security → Temporary logins.
2. In What is it for?, write something you will recognise later, for example developer fixing checkout.
3. Choose How long: 1 hour, 8 hours, 24 hours or 7 days.
4. Press Create temporary login.

The panel makes the name for you — temp1, temp2, and so on — and generates the password.

Save this now. The panel shows a box called Send these three lines holding the panel link, the username and the password. The password exists only in that box. Nobody, including you, can read it again. If you close the box too early, delete that login and make a new one.

Copy the three lines and send them to the person who needs them. They sign in on the same login page you use.

A temporary login is not asked for a 6-digit code. That is on purpose: the person you invited does not have your phone. What keeps it safe is the short list of things it may do, not a second factor.

You can have up to 20 temporary logins at once.

What a temporary login can do

• Deploy and update the code, and roll back.
• Start, stop and restart services, and watch their logs.
• Read files and browse folders.
• Look at the database pages, the health tab and the activity of the site.

What a temporary login can never do

The panel refuses these, and says why in the message:

• Change your username, your password, your 6-digit code, the signed-in devices, the login address list, other temporary logins or the demo login.
• See or change the secret panel address.
• Reveal a stored secret on the App .env page, or open any .env file in the file manager.
• See the backup password, restore a backup, or change where backups go.
• Download a copy of the database, import a database, or open phpMyAdmin.
• Create or delete a project.
• Change or delete a file, upload a file, or change permissions.
• Update the server itself, or change where alert emails go.
• Create a scheduled task that runs on the server itself.
• Change the Cloudflare API token.

End it early

In the Temporary logins table, press Delete on the row. The login stops working at once, and whoever is using it is signed out on their next click.

The table also shows when it ends and when it was last used, so you can see whether an invitation was ever accepted.

Expired logins are removed by the panel by itself. You do not have to tidy up.

Over SSH, when you cannot open the panel:

sudo sixpanel temp-login              # list them
sudo sixpanel temp-login revoke-all   # delete every one of them

There is no way to create one over SSH, because the password has to be shown on a screen exactly once and then never again.

The public demo login

This is for showing the panel to somebody — a client, a buyer, a forum thread. It signs them in as a visitor who can look and cannot touch.

Everything a demo visitor can see is published. The demo password is meant to be shared, so treat every screen it reaches as if it were on your website. Leave the demo off on a live project.

Switch it on

1. Security → Public demo login.
2. Optionally type a note. It is shown on the login page, for example Demo project — data resets nightly.
3. Press Switch the demo on and confirm.

The panel then shows three things: the demo link, the demo username (demo) and the demo password. The demo link is your normal panel link with #demo on the end — opening it fills the login form in by itself, so the person you sent it to only has to press Sign in.

New demo password replaces the password. The old one stops working at once.

A demo session lasts 2 hours and then asks for the password again.

What the demo shows

The dashboard, the project list, domains and certificates, the health tab, the services and whether they are running, the disk and database figures, and the shape of your settings.

What the demo never shows

Every password, key and token is removed before the answer leaves the server. On top of that, whole pages are refused outright:

• the activity log,
• job logs and the live output of anything running,
• the scheduled-task pages and their logs,
• a service's live log,
• file contents, file downloads and file search,
• database downloads and phpMyAdmin,
• the backup password and where your backups go,
• the email-alert settings,
• everything about who gets in: signed-in devices, the login address list, the temporary logins, and the secret panel address.

On the App .env page a demo visitor sees only the harmless settings. Every other value is blank, including your site address.

And every attempt to change something is refused, whatever it is.

Switch it off

Press Switch the demo off. Everyone using it is signed out at once.

Over SSH:

sudo sixpanel demo off

There is no demo on over SSH. Switching it on publishes a login, so that decision belongs in the panel, where the warning is on the screen in front of you.

How to check it worked

• Security shows a temporary login in its table, or the demo as on.
• Open the demo link in a private browser window. It signs you in, the top of the page says the session is read only, and every button that changes something is gone.
• The Activity log has a row for the temporary login being created, or the demo login being used.

If it went wrong

• The person says "wrong username or password" — the temporary login has already expired, or the three lines were copied with a line missing. Delete it and create a new one.
• They see "this is the read-only demo" — they are signed in with the demo login, not the temporary one. Send them the temporary login's three lines.
• They cannot do something they need to do — read the list above. If the work really needs it, do that one step yourself; do not hand over your own login.
• You want everyone out, now — sudo sixpanel temp-login revoke-all and sudo sixpanel demo off. Your own login is untouched.

Everything else about who can reach this panel: Security.