WordPress has enjoyed an overwhelming reputation for decades and has built a community that creates websites even for non-technical users.
However, despite its popularity, WordPress has failed to curb the status quo of password sharing. In other words, it doesn’t help you protect your private content or valuable information on your website. This is especially important if you run a business with WordPress.
So in this article, you’ll learn how to stop password sharing and protect your content. But first, let’s find out how people can share WordPress passwords and why this is dangerous for your website.
How can users share WordPress passwords
The problem of password sharing has its origins in the way WordPress handles user sessions. First, cookies are used to store information about logged-in users. They do not contain passwords, but usernames and special keys that prove users know the passwords.
The next problem occurs when WordPress allows users to log in from two different locations with the same credentials. In simple terms, you log into your website from a public computer and press the “Remember me” button.
Then, anyone can use that computer to access your website. Or others can even log in to your website with the same username in several places at the same time without using your PC. As a result, users are more likely to take advantage of this and share passwords with their family, friends, or acquaintances to gain free access to your paid content.
In any case, you need to find a workable approach to solve this problem and prevent password sharing, which is detrimental to your website. In the next section, we will introduce our Password Protect WordPress (PPWP) Pro plugin.
Get to know the password protection plugin for WordPress
Password Protect WordPress Pro, or PPWP Pro for short, is a powerful plugin that allows you to create one or an unlimited number of passwords to protect your pages, posts, and any custom post types you want. More specifically, PPWP includes three main password protection modes.
- Single Content Protection allows you to protect your content individually or under categories (including WooCommerce products) and different post types. In addition, you can set access levels for your content, which is very beneficial in terms of premium content. This means that users with lower levels will not be able to access higher levels of content, so you can make sure the aforementioned benefits for your users.
- Partial Content Protection (PCP) allows you to protect specific areas of content when you don’t need to restrict the entire post. You can display a teaser asking visitors to register or log in to view the entire content. This can do wonders for your web traffic.
- Sitewide Protection allows you to protect your entire WordPress website with a single password. This is handy if you want to lock all your content, including pages, posts, or custom post types, from public view.
In addition, it’s worth noting that PPWP is popular for its simple and user-friendly features. One of the reasons for this is its smooth integration with the leading page builders such as Elementor, Beaver Builder, Divi, and WP Bakery. Therefore, you can customize the user interface of the password form and manage all passwords in one place.
Prevent password sharing with PPWP Pro
It’s clear that users need to enter passwords to access your website or content, but PPWP’s specialization doesn’t stop there. On the contrary, it allows you to restrict access to these passwords with the following features.
By default, PPWP Pro grants access to anyone who has the passwords. However, it is possible to assign passwords to specific people by defining their specific roles.
For example, if you want only your subscribers to have access to exclusive content, you can change their roles to subscribers and create passwords for them. This way, only the subscribers can access your content; access is restricted for other people, even though they have the correct passwords.
Restrict access to a single user at a time
Instead of limiting the number of users by their roles, you can simply restrict access to your protected content to a single user.
Simply put, if a user has already accessed your protected content, other users, even with valid passwords, will no longer be able to access that content until the former user’s cookie expires. In this respect, our PPWP Smart Restriction has done a good job.
Restrict by IP address
PPWP Smart Restriction allows you to restrict the use of passwords based on IP addresses or logged in users. When they enter passwords to access your website or content, the passwords are stored as cookies in their browsers, so you can easily restrict these passwords to their login credentials.
Set expiry time for passwords
Even if users share their passwords with others, you can restrict their access by setting an expiration time or limiting the use of passwords to a certain number of times.
Once the cookies expire or the number of passwords used is exceeded, users will have to re-enter their passwords to maintain access.
One advantage of PPWP is that the plugin can automatically generate new passwords once the cookies have expired. This means that only authorized users can then access your protected website again.
Conclusion
Sharing passwords causes problems in various ways, and the more advanced the technology, the greater the number of attackers. Therefore, it is important to prevent password sharing.
PPWP Pro addresses this challenge by going beyond basic password protection. By implementing role-based restrictions, single-user access controls, IP-based limitations, and automatic password expiration, you can maintain the user experience your legitimate customers expect while effectively preventing unauthorized access.
