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How to Control the Marker.io Widget Visibility
How to Control the Marker.io Widget Visibility

Control Who Sees Your Marker.io Bug Reporting Widget

Joe Scanlon avatar
Written by Joe Scanlon
Updated this week

You can easily control who can see the Marker.io widget on your website, making it a flexible tool for issue tracking and bug reporting. You can set the widget to be visible to everyone, restrict it to specific users, or hide it entirely. Here’s how to manage these settings and make the most of Marker.io's features:

Widget Visibility Settings

We offer three visibility settings for the widget:

  1. Visible to Everyone

  2. Restricted to Invited Users

  3. Completely Hidden

Let's dive into each of these options below.


Visible to Everyone

This setting allows anyone with access to your website to report issues.

Use Cases

  • Staging Environments: Collect input on new features before they go live.

  • Internal Testing: Get input from a wider internal team to test website usability.

  • Beta Testing: Allow beta testers to report bugs during the test phase.

How to Enable

  1. Go to Widget > Button > Button Visibility.

  2. Select Everyone.

Everyone with access to the environment can view the Marker.io widget and report issues.


Restrict to invited users

Limit the widget's visibility to only those who have been specifically invited to your Marker.io account.

Use Cases

  • Closed Alpha Testing: Get detailed bug reports from a select group.

  • Team-Specific Insights: Gather issues from a particular team.

  • UAT: Invite your clients to report issues before accepting the completion of their websites

How to Enable

  1. Go to Widget > Button > Button visibility.

  2. Select Restrict to Marker.io members and guests.

This option means that only users who have been invited can see and interact with the Marker.io widget.


Hide the Marker.io widget

In live environments where bug reports are needed from a specific subset of users, and you'd like to limit distractions and spam, you can hide the widget completely. You can still allow certain users to activate it with:

  • Secret URL Parameters: Add ?bug to the URL.

  • Secret Shortcut Keys: Use ⌘ U on Mac or ALT U on Windows/Linux.

Note: Activating the widget using the secret options above will activate it for about one hour and only on your local machine.

Use Cases

  • Live Website issues: Gather input from a select group of power users.

  • Client bug reports: Allow clients to report bugs during maintenance or updates.

  • High-Traffic Events: Monitor reports during events without distracting regular users.

How to Enable

  1. Go to Widget > Button > Button visibility.

  2. Select Hidden.


Advanced Widget Targeting

Widget Targeting with the WordPress Plugin

If you're using the Marker.io WordPress plugin, you can further edit widget visibility by:

  • Showing the widget only to specific user roles.

  • Displaying the widget based on certain page conditions.

  • Enabling the widget in the admin section of your WordPress site.

Note: Please be aware that we will also include settings from the Marker.io side, so please ensure that these are set accordingly also.

Example: If you want bug reports from only authenticated WordPress user:

  • Set the WordPress widget to: "Only authenticated WordPress users"

  • Set the Marker.io button visibility to: "Everyone"


Widget Targeting with the Browser Extension.

Only invited members and guests can view the widget when it's installed using the browser extension. When someone is invited to your account, they will get simple step-by-step instructions to install the extension.

To manage the widget settings:

  1. Go to your project settings.

  2. Select Widget.

  3. Navigate to Installation.

  4. Choose Browser Extension.

Note: People must be invited to your team and install the browser extension to report issues this way.


Summary

By adjusting the widget visibility settings, you can control who sees the Marker.io widget based on your needs. If you have questions, feel free to contact us via the chat option at the bottom of our webpages.

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