Coming Soon & Private on AT: Instagram Widget refused to work when site is on Coming Soon/Private mode

[retnonindya]

Steps to reproduce

1. Ensure the website is set to Coming Soon or Private
2. Open Customizer > Widgets > choose widget area
3. Add a widget: Instagram
4. Try to connect Instagram by clicking 'Connect Instagram Account'
5. A pop-up, asked if we want to continue connecting Instagram with our WordPress.com website appeared
6. Click 'Continue'
7. Pop-up disappeared, then a 'Leave site?' prompt appeared

What I expected

Instagram widget able to connect and work properly even when the site is set to Private/Coming Soon...

... or a warning on the Customizer, informing folks that the site is set to Private/Coming Soon, and the widget would not work.

What happened instead

The widget looks okay, giving expectation that the widget should work. The widget didn't work/didn't connect without clear error message, caused frustration and confusion.

Context / Source

#manual-testing #user-report

[eduardozulian]

Another report on 3183684-zen

[thesacredpath]

Another here: 3184869-zen

[rinazrina]

Another one: #3327365-zen

[katiebethbrown]

Another report: 3371670-zd-woothemes

[serabi]

Another report: #25593826-hc

[JoshuaGoode]

Adding my comment from the related issue specifically for the block instead of the widget: #43131

This will no longer occur with the site uses Coming Soon v2.

This is somewhat expected behavior on Private as it is very restrictive and blocks many Jetpack modules, external requests, and more.

The recommendation is to use Coming Soon v2 powered by the WordPress.com Editing Toolkit plugin.

This might could be closed as won't fix due to the current nature of Private mode on Atomic.

I'd say leave it open as a Simple/Atomic parity issue and to help decide the future of Private mode which can break many things.

[katiebethbrown]

Another report in 31425815-hc

The site was private. Had them switch to Coming Soon to resolve.