---
title: Changing the visibility of your GitHub Pages site
intro: You can manage access control for your project site by publishing the site publicly or privately.
product: '{% data reusables.gated-features.private-pages %}'
versions:
  fpt: '*'
  ghec: '*'
permissions: 'People with admin permissions for a repository can change the visibility of a {% data variables.product.prodname_pages %} site.'
redirect_from:
  - /github/working-with-github-pages/changing-the-visibility-of-your-github-pages-site
shortTitle: Change visibility of site
---

## About access control for {% data variables.product.prodname_pages %} sites

With access control for {% data variables.product.prodname_pages %}, you can restrict access to your {% data variables.product.prodname_pages %} site by publishing the site privately. A privately published site can only be accessed by people with read access to the repository the site is published from. You can use privately published sites to share your internal documentation or knowledge base with members of your enterprise. 

If your enterprise uses {% data variables.product.prodname_emus %}, all {% data variables.product.prodname_pages %} sites are privately published. For more information about {% data variables.product.prodname_emus %}, see "[About  {% data variables.product.prodname_emus %}](/enterprise-cloud@latest/admin/authentication/managing-your-enterprise-users-with-your-identity-provider/about-enterprise-managed-users)."

If your organization uses {% data variables.product.prodname_ghe_cloud %} without {% data variables.product.prodname_emus %}, you can choose to publish your sites privately or publicly to anyone on the internet. Access control is available for project sites that are published from a private or internal repository that are owned by the organization. You cannot manage access control for an organization site. For more information about the types of {% data variables.product.prodname_pages %} sites, see "[About {% data variables.product.prodname_pages %}](/pages/getting-started-with-github-pages/about-github-pages#types-of-github-pages-sites)."

Privately published sites are available at a different subdomain than publicly published sites. This ensures that your {% data variables.product.prodname_pages %} site is secure from the moment it's published:

- We automatically secure every subdomain of `*.pages.github.io` with a TLS certificate, and enforce HSTS to ensure that browsers always serve the page over HTTPS.
- We use a unique subdomain for the private page to ensure that other repositories in your organization cannot publish content on the same origin as the private page. This protects your private page from "[cookie tossing](https://github.blog/2013-04-09-yummy-cookies-across-domains/)". This is also why we don't host {% data variables.product.prodname_pages %} sites on the `github.com` domain.

You can see your site's unique subdomain in the pages tab of your repository settings. If you're using a static site generator configured to build the site with the repository name as a path, you may need to update the settings for the static site generator when changing the site to private. For more information, see "[Configuring Jekyll in your {% data variables.product.prodname_pages %} site](/pages/configuring-a-custom-domain-for-your-github-pages-site/managing-a-custom-domain-for-your-github-pages-site#configuring-a-subdomain)" or the documentation for your static site generator.

To use a shorter and more memorable domain for your private {% data variables.product.prodname_pages %} site, you can configure a custom domain. For more information, see "[Configuring a custom domain for your {% data variables.product.prodname_pages %} site](/pages/configuring-a-custom-domain-for-your-github-pages-site)."

## Changing the visibility of your {% data variables.product.prodname_pages %} site

{% data reusables.pages.navigate-site-repo %}
{% data reusables.repositories.sidebar-settings %}
{% data reusables.pages.sidebar-pages %}
3. Under "{% data variables.product.prodname_pages %}", select the **{% data variables.product.prodname_pages %} visibility** drop-down menu, then click a visibility.
   ![Drop-down to choose a visibility for your site](/assets/images/help/pages/public-or-private-visibility.png)
4. To see your published site, under "{% data variables.product.prodname_pages %}", click your site's URL.
![URL of your privately published site](/assets/images/help/pages/click-private-pages-url-to-preview.png)

  {% note %}

  {% data reusables.pages.twenty-minutes-to-publish %}

  {% endnote %}