Read the Docs社区版Private权限设置疑问：功能与权限配置求助

Hey there! Let's clear up the confusion around RTD Community Edition's Private project setting—this is a common gotcha since it works way differently than the commercial version.

First, the straight answer: The Community Edition's Private setting isn't a true permission-controlled private project (like the commercial version offers). Instead, it's a hard "hidden" state that locks out everyone—including you, the maintainer.

Here's why you can't access your own docs when setting it to Private:

• RTD Community Edition doesn't have the user permission management tools that the commercial tier includes. When you flip the switch to Private, it removes the project from public indexes, search results, and blocks all access requests—but there's no way to whitelist yourself or other users because that infrastructure doesn't exist in the free version.
• The official docs mention "Private objects only open to authorized users" because that's how the commercial version works. The community edition's Private setting is a stripped-down, limited version that doesn't include the authorization part.

For your use case (writing docs privately before open-sourcing), here are better alternatives:

• Use the Protected setting: This hides your docs from search crawlers and RTD's public directory, but anyone with the direct link can access it. It's secure enough for draft work where you don't share the link publicly.
• Build docs locally: Use tools like mkdocs or sphinx to build and preview your docs on your own machine. This keeps everything 100% private until you're ready to push to RTD and set it to Public.
• Upgrade to the commercial plan: If you need true permission-controlled privacy (where you and your team can access the docs while keeping them hidden from everyone else), the commercial tier is the only way to go—since it includes user roles and access controls.

To sum up: You didn't miss any steps. The Community Edition's Private setting is essentially a "lock everyone out" mode, not a configurable private workspace.

内容的提问来源于stack exchange，提问作者lucasgcb