How do you stake / forge in nxt / ardor using a public node without having to login publicly? I have a public nxt / ardor node, but how do I set it to stake / forge with my account? I'm planning to create a separate account and just lease my balance to it to forge.


What settings do I need set to make this work?
You should lease the balance of your main account to a second account which has only a small balance. Submit this leasing transaction on your local workstation.
See: https://nxtwiki.org/wiki/Account_Leasing

Now setup a public node and start forging using your second account. 

By doing so, you never have to expose the passphrase of your main account to the public node, only the passphrase of your second account which has a small balance is exposed.