Demo Mode

WhatsMine includes a built-in demo mode — a safe, public, read-only showcase of the application. It's perfect for a live demo on your marketing site, so prospects can click around without breaking anything or seeing real customer data.

What demo mode does

When demo mode is enabled, two protections apply automatically:

  1. No writes. Every create/update/delete action is blocked across the customer app, the admin panel and the public REST API. Visitors can browse, filter and open records, but nothing they do is saved. A friendly message explains that changes are disabled.
  2. Personal data is masked. Contact phone numbers, emails, names and message text are masked on screen (e.g. +1 ••• ••• 1234) so no real personal information is exposed — even though the underlying data stays intact for the app's internal logic.

A banner is shown at the top of the app, admin and inbox layouts to make it clear you're in a demo.

📸 Screenshot: The customer app in demo mode, showing the demo banner and masked contact details.

What is not blocked

  • Inbound webhooks are intentionally still accepted, so a live demo keeps receiving messages.
  • Logging in and out works (including the one-click demo login below).

Enabling demo mode

Set this in your .env:

APP_DEMO_MODE=true

Then refresh the config cache:

php artisan config:clear

To turn it off again, set APP_DEMO_MODE=false.

One-click demo login

When demo mode is on, the customer login screen shows a "Sign in to the demo" button that logs visitors straight into a pre-seeded demo account — no credentials required.

The demo account uses the credentials defined by these env values (with sensible defaults):

DEMO_EMAIL=client@example.net
DEMO_PASSWORD=secret

These should match the demo user created by the seeder. To create rich demo content, install with the --seed flag:

php artisan saas:install --fresh --seed
  1. Spin up a separate environment/subdomain (e.g. demo.your-domain.com) just for the demo.
  2. Install with demo data: php artisan saas:install --fresh --seed.
  3. Set APP_DEMO_MODE=true.
  4. Link to it from your marketing site's "Live Demo" button.

Don't enable demo mode on your production platform

Demo mode blocks all writes — your real customers wouldn't be able to do anything. Use it only on a dedicated demo environment.

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