As a website owner, you typically want to show your content publicly and allow it to be indexed by Google and other search engines. This helps you attract more visitors and traffic, which increases the popularity of your website.
However, in some cases, you may not want a post, parts of your WordPress blog, or the entire website to be visible to the general public. In this article, we list 3 reasons why you should make a WordPress post or website private and show you how to do it easily.
3 key reasons for creating a private blog
- Underdeveloped WordPress site – When you post content on your website, you may want to restrict unauthorized users from accessing the content on your WordPress site until it is complete. Making your site private proves useful as only you and the development team can view, edit and leave comments.
- Internal communications within a company – Internal communication is another common reason for creating private WordPress sites. WordPress can be used privately for training modules and work-related conversation within a company or organization, making it only accessible to your team members and people at your workplace.
- Personal private content – In some circumstances, you may want to store your family photos or videos, but you don’t want to show them to the whole world. A private blog is the perfect place to store them.
Personal blogs are another common type of website that you may want to make private. By creating a private blog and making it accessible only to certain readers, you can avoid unwanted visitors.
How to set up a private blog
WordPress offers the capability to make your blog posts private, such as setting the status to private or setting a password.
1. How to Set Status to Private
For articles you’ve already published, you can follow these simple steps to make them private:
- Go to your WordPress dashboard
- Click on Post → All posts
- Select a single post that you want to make private
- Click on Edit
- Find the visibility in the top right corner of your screen and click Edit
- Activate the Private option
- Click on OK
Once you have activated the Private option, only administrators can see the post. But what if you want to write a blog and keep it private from within the Block Editor?
To do this, search for Status in the top right corner of your editor. Click on Status and select the Private option.
No. 2 Password protection for a post
WordPress also has a checkbox that allows you to password protect a blog. In other words, once you set a password to protect the post, only people with that password will be able to access the protected content.
Password protecting a published blog post is done in similar steps to setting the status to Private:
- Go to your WordPress dashboard
- Click on Post → All posts
- Select a single post that you want to protect with a password
- Click on Edit
- Search for Visibility in the top right-hand corner of the screen and then click Edit
- Activate the Password protected option
- Enter a password to protect the post
- Press OK
Although WordPress supports password protection of posts, you can install a plugin to extend the password protection functionality. The WordPress plugin Password Protect WordPress Pro (PPWP) is highly recommended for password protecting your website.
It not only supports the protection of a single post, but also all lower-level pages and posts under a parent page. You can also assign different passwords for different users to access the same page, and blocking access to the entire WordPress website is also possible with this plugin.
With just a few clicks, you can install the WordPress Password Protect plugin and password protect your content.
You can also select user types that can access your protected content without entering a password, i.e. admins, authors of posts and logged-in users.
Conclusion
There are various ways to make your WordPress website private. You can either activate the “Private” function, or set a password so that certain content is not searchable (though you’ll need a password protection plugin to do this).
