Documentation

How Unhid Works

Unhid sits between your domain's DNS and your hosting provider. When a request comes in:

• Human visitors are forwarded directly to your origin (Lovable, Netlify, Vercel, etc.). They experience your site exactly as before.
• Bots (search engines, AI crawlers, social media scrapers) are intercepted. Unhid renders your page with a headless browser and returns the full HTML to the bot.

This means bots see fully rendered content — meta tags, text, links — instead of an empty SPA shell. Your SEO improves, your pages appear in AI answers, and social media previews work correctly.

Setup Guide

1. Create your account

   Sign up at unhid.ai/signup. You'll need an email address and password, or you can use Google sign-in.

2. Add your domain and origin

   In the dashboard, enter your website's public domain with the www prefix (e.g. www.coolsite.com) and your origin URL — where your site is actually hosted (e.g. https://coolsite.netlify.app).

   Why www? DNS rules don't allow CNAME records on apex/root domains (like coolsite.com). Using www.coolsite.com lets you add the required CNAME record at any registrar. If you enter an apex domain, Unhid will automatically register it as www. for you.

3. Choose a plan and subscribe

   Select a plan that matches your expected bot traffic. You can upgrade or downgrade at any time.

4. Update your DNS

   After subscribing, the dashboard will show you a CloudFront endpoint. Add a CNAME record in your DNS provider:

   Type: CNAME
Name: www
Value: (the endpoint shown in your dashboard)

   Then set up a redirect from your apex domain to www:

   • GoDaddy: Domain Settings → Forwarding → add coolsite.com → forward to https://www.coolsite.com (301 Permanent)
   • Namecheap: Domain → Redirect Domain → https://www.coolsite.com
   • Cloudflare: You can use a CNAME on the apex directly (Cloudflare flattens it automatically). No redirect needed.
   • Route 53: Create an A record with Alias pointing to the CloudFront endpoint. No redirect needed.

   This ensures both coolsite.com and www.coolsite.com reach your site through Unhid.

5. Wait for verification

   Once DNS propagates (usually a few minutes, sometimes up to an hour), CloudFront will automatically verify your domain and issue a TLS certificate. Your dashboard will show a green "Active" status.

Supported Bots

Unhid detects 50+ bot signatures, including:

FAQ

Does Unhid slow down my site for visitors?

No. Human visitors are forwarded directly to your origin with no processing. They never interact with the rendering layer.

What if the renderer fails?

Unhid uses graceful fallthrough. If rendering fails for any reason, the bot request is passed to your origin. The bot sees your SPA shell — not ideal, but never an error page.

Do I need to install anything on my site?

No. Unhid works entirely at the DNS/CDN layer. No code changes, no middleware, no server-side configuration.

How fresh is the cached content?

Cache TTL depends on your plan (24h for Starter, 12h for Pro, custom for Enterprise). You can also manually purge pages from the dashboard at any time.

Can I see what bots are seeing?

The dashboard shows all cached pages with timestamps. A render preview feature is coming in a future update.