Participant Experience on a Locked Page
When a gate is protecting a page, what does the participant actually see and do? This page covers the situations that come up, and what (if anything) you need to set up for each.
Situation 1: Continue leads to a page that's still locked
If a participant clicks Continue (or any Card Link) toward a page that is still Time-Locked, they are not taken there. They stay exactly where they already are — on the page they just came from — and see a short message explaining when the next page opens:
That page isn't open yet — it opens in 2 days, 3 hours, 12 min, 5 sec.
or, if the window has already closed:
That page has closed.
Nothing to set up. This works automatically for every page in every template — whichever page the participant happens to be on becomes their "holding page" for as long as the next one is locked. You don't need to designate any particular page (like Page 2) as the holding page; it's always wherever they currently are, and it's always a page they can already read, edit, and navigate from normally, because it's a page they've already reached.
Situation 2: A participant is already ON a locked page
This can still happen even with Situation 1 in place — for example, someone opens a bookmarked link, uses their browser's back/forward buttons, or reloads a stale tab. In this case:
- The gate's status/countdown message (wherever you've set its Display Element) stays fully readable — it is never blurred, even while the rest of the page is.
- The rest of the page's content (form fields, instructions, etc.) is blurred and not interactive, so nothing can be filled in before the gate actually opens.
- If that page has its own "Back" button (a Button element with a Card Link action pointing to the previous page), that button also stays fully readable and clickable — the participant can leave without waiting.
The one thing you may need to set up: a Back button
The countdown staying readable is automatic (as long as the gate's Display Element is set to an element on that same page — see Set Display Element). The Back button only works this way if the page actually has one authored on it already. Most of your pages already do (a Button with a Card Link back to the previous page), but a few don't — most commonly the very first page in a sequence, since there's nothing before it to go back to.
If you want a specific locked page to offer a way out, add a Button to it with a Card Link action targeting the previous page — see Button and Card Link. Once it's there, it's automatically exempted from the blur/lock whenever that page is protected by a gate — no extra gate configuration needed.
Situation 3: Auto-advance when a page you reference just opened
If your own page text already references a later page's gate using the gate-reference token — [countdown: gate:<id>] or [time: gate:<id>], see Showing a Live Countdown in Your Own Text — a participant sitting on that page is automatically taken to the referenced page the moment its gate opens. They don't have to click Continue themselves; it happens on its own, typically within a few seconds of the gate opening.
This only fires while the participant's browser tab is actually open and they've been active recently — the same "active session" window that logs someone out after a period of inactivity. If their tab is closed, their laptop is asleep, or they've stepped away long enough to time out, nothing auto-advances for them. That's expected, not a bug: the next time they come back and click Continue themselves, they land on the correct page exactly as Situation 1 above describes — auto-advance is a convenience on top of that, never a replacement for it.
Nothing extra to set up beyond the token itself. If a page's text already shows a live countdown to a later gate using the token above, that same reference is what drives the auto-advance — there's no separate toggle.
Situation 4: This page has been set to lock after its own deadline (opt-in)
By default, a page whose gate has closed still shows a "❌ This page closed" message but stays fully editable - nothing stops someone from continuing to fill it in after the fact. If an admin has turned on "Lock this page after its deadline passes?" for that gate (see Lock After Deadline), that changes once the deadline passes:
- The rest of the page's content (form fields, instructions, etc.) is blurred and not interactive, exactly like Situation 2 above - just triggered by the deadline passing instead of not-yet-open.
- The closed-status message stays fully readable, and that page's own Back button (if it has one) stays clickable, so the participant can still leave.
This is opt-in and off by default. Nothing changes for any existing gate unless an admin explicitly turns it on - and it's purely a visual/UX signal, not a security boundary; it does not by itself prevent someone from reaching the page's data through other means.
Questions?
If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us. Alternatively, you can submit an issue on this platform.