Setting your posts – or entire blog – to private
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January 14, 2009
If you’d like to make particular posts private or password protected, or have your whole blog only accessible to certain people, WordPress has options for you. Here’s how to go about it.
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WordPress.tv 
January 17, 2009 at 9:58 am |
How would it be possible to have the third option on a self hosted blog (wordpress.org install)? Is there a plugin that does this exact thing: my blog to be invisible to users I choose?
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January 17, 2009 at 10:09 am |
Sure (we’ll be sure to cover this in a future video). There are a few good plugins to achieve this effect in the Plugins directory. See Private Only for instance. You might also find Private Files useful.
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February 18, 2010 at 8:16 pm |
is there a video on how to install: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/absolute-privacy/ and if so – can you change it at anytime for all the world to see. I just do not want my blog public until I am ready. Thanks. y
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February 18, 2010 at 9:33 pm
We do not have a video detailing how to install this plugin. If you have questions about it, you’ll get the best answers by leaving those questions in the WordPress.org forums.
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September 18, 2009 at 10:11 pm |
In Reply To Dette and his post on January 17, 2009 at 9:58 am
How would it be possible to have the third option on a self hosted blog (wordpress.org install)? Is there a plugin that does this exact thing: my blog to be invisible to users I choose?
I had the same issues and just applied this plug-in and know it works.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/absolute-privacy/
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January 17, 2009 at 2:17 pm |
thanks for the videos, I’ll be trawling them for info soon!
my posts take me a long time to prepare, I rarely have the time to finish them in one go. What I would like is to have my posts set to be private by default, not public, so I can keep them hidden until they’re ready. If I forget to set a new post to private it will go out to the world before it’s ready, not good.
I know I can set the publication-date to the future instead, but that is just the same problem in a different guise. Unless I remember to change something when I make a first draft of a post, it will be published prematurely.
Any chance such a feature will appear sometime?
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January 17, 2009 at 3:45 pm |
Thanks, Tony. If you save your post as a draft, you needn’t publish it until you’re ready. When you’re done for the time being, click Save Draft instead of the Publish button. You’ll then be able to access the draft from the “recent drafts” pane of your dashboard, or via the Posts> Edit menu.
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January 18, 2009 at 9:36 am |
Heres an idea. Why not put related videos on the same area. Or after main video is done at the end. In the video window.
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January 18, 2009 at 5:25 pm |
Thanks for the feedback – we’re taking notes đŸ˜‰
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January 18, 2009 at 3:16 pm |
I tried to make my entire blog private, but when the user tried to log in, they needed not only a login name but a password, too. Am I missing something? Do these users need to have WordPress accounts, and thus their own passwords?
I am trying to create something private for my organization with the minimum amount of obstacles for access. All I want is a single password for everyone without having to create an account. Is this at all possible?
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January 18, 2009 at 5:21 pm |
Your users would need to have WordPress.com accounts, as you can only invite other WordPress.com users to collaborate on/visit your private blog. For more information on privacy settings, there’s an entry in our support section.
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February 6, 2010 at 5:56 am |
This is critical information that is completely missing from the any of the documentation, as far as I can tell. I’ve spent an hour looking for this info. Glad to have it, but more helpful to have it in the privacy docs.
Thanks,
Jeff Byers
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January 18, 2009 at 5:38 pm |
Hi Michael,
Oops, I guess if it’s that easy I should have read the documentation first
Kudos to you for not just telling me to go away and read it, thank you!
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January 18, 2009 at 6:07 pm |
My pleasure, Tony
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January 18, 2009 at 9:00 pm |
Hi,
The third option under privacy settings that would make the whole blog private isn’t there. Only the first two options show.
Please help.
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January 19, 2009 at 5:39 am |
Apologies for any confusion, Michael – this is a feature of WordPress.com blogs. If you have your own installation of WordPress, however, there are plugins that will help you to achieve the same end result. See for instance the Members Only plugin. There are several others in the plugins directory if that doesn’t suit your needs.
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January 19, 2009 at 4:02 pm |
Thanks Mr Pick! Just installed that plug-in and seems to be working a treat.
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January 19, 2009 at 4:17 pm
Excellent, glad to hear you got it up and running!
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January 18, 2009 at 9:49 pm |
My present, and only blog, is not private, but with all the features WordPress has, I am considering this possibility — after I get in the groove of my public blog. Thank you for your thoughts.
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January 19, 2009 at 6:26 am |
Is WordPressTV meant for WordPress.com users only, then?? If so, that should be made clear; if not, there should be some kind of icon system so we’ll know which videos apply to which platform…
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January 19, 2009 at 6:31 am |
Hi Bonnie. The initial batch of videos contain more .com information, however you can expect to see the balance redressed in the coming weeks and months. Thanks for your feedback – agreed, there needs to be clearer differentiation between versions and this is high on our list of fixes
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January 19, 2009 at 3:19 pm |
Great! I’ll be looking for the “WordPress.ChezMoi” icon then! đŸ™‚
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January 19, 2009 at 4:17 pm
đŸ™‚
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January 27, 2009 at 5:03 pm |
Is there any form for non wordpress visitors to register for a userid & password to view my blog? Key word “maintenance free” on my part.
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January 27, 2009 at 5:09 pm |
Hi Chris. You could direct any user to sign up at WordPress.com – so long as you then add their username to the list of people allowed access (assuming you’ve set it to private), they’ll be able to view it. It’s also possible to send out an invitation to sign up right from your WordPress.com blog’s Users menu.
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January 28, 2009 at 5:01 pm |
Hey,
Want to allow posters to post video or pictures with their comments. Is that possible? I see I can post my own.
Thanks!
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January 31, 2009 at 4:14 pm |
Hi,
In old versions of wordpress I was able to make a post both private AND password protected, can I still do this in 2.7?
Thanks
Mike
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February 2, 2009 at 10:54 pm |
Hi Michael,
I am aware of this feature and how they can get access to the blog, but I’m wondering if there are any future plans to present them with a screen that is not just the login form. I think that some users might not understand that they need a WordPress account to login or that I as the admin need to explicitly add their accounts to allow access.
It would be nice if they could request access somehow. A small CAPTCHA protected form or perhaps allowing the blog owner to specify a bounce page that viewers are redirected to.
I’m curious if this kind of request has ever been considered or if there is another workaround that have the same basic behaviour.
Thanks
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February 3, 2009 at 5:25 am |
Thanks for the feedback, John, we take it all on board
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February 2, 2009 at 11:43 pm |
This is no good as i will have lots of members and do not want to manually add users. Plus i dont see that it should be a charged service for more since this is a free WordPress. But still i would not pay because i can not just click and all users are automatically added! It’s close to what i want though.
This is feedback to hopefully help developers improve it :).
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February 6, 2009 at 6:37 pm |
I am confused – please help…
I am in the process of setting up a family Blog which I only want extended family members to see. I have followed all of the above guidelines. I solely want my family members to view the Blog and not be able to post etc, so I would like to add them as “Subscribers”. My problem is that, for some reason, I do not appear to have that option in my drop-down set. My only options are “Contributor”, “Administrator”, “Editor” and “Author”. None of these are appropriate as they all allow the reader to have extended access.
I am using the free WordPress.com service if that helps…
Many thanks in advance for any assistance.
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February 6, 2009 at 8:09 pm |
… it’s okay, I have worked it out!
Thanks anyway.
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February 7, 2009 at 4:03 am |
Hi Neil – sounds like you worked it out, but if anyone else has this problem: by adding users to your private blog (see the WordPress.com support post about this) you enable them as readers only. To add them as actual contributors, you’ll need to go through the Users > Add New Users menu (support content here).
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February 9, 2010 at 12:20 am
Michael,
I think a lot of confusion comes from the fact that there are two separate places to create “users.” One is to create a list of allowed readers. Another is to create collaborators with various levels of editorial or administrative control. Calling them both users and putting the controls in different places, with no mention in either place of the other kind of users is bound to lead to confusion. Neil is not alone. I struggled with this for a long time. It would seem sensible to put all permissions set-up in one place. Ideally that would be where the three levels of collaboration are now. There would be a fourth, lower, level called “readers” or “viewers.” I think doing this would save your constituents a lot of time, would help engender positive feelings toward WordPress (which, by the way, you all deserve, for putting such a great tool on the web for free), and would save you and your colleagues a lot of explanation time.
Cordially,
Jeff Byers
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February 8, 2009 at 3:01 am |
Hi Michael,
If the blog is NOT sitting on the home page of the site, how can I password-protect it?
I tick the checkbox for the password protection on the ‘blog page’ but it doesn’t work.
My WordPress.org installation is sitting one level down from root.
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February 9, 2009 at 5:43 am |
Hi Griff. If you’re running a self-installed version of WordPress, you’ll need to add a plugin to get the same functionality for making your blog private. There are several in the WordPress plugins directory. I hear that Members Only is a popular choice. Hope that helps
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March 2, 2009 at 8:06 pm |
I want to make it so I can give one name and password out to many people so they can just log in before they see my account. Don’t want everyone to have to sign up for WordPress. Is this possible, and if not, is there a blog that I can use that it is possible?
Thanks!
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March 3, 2009 at 5:16 pm |
Hi Rebekah, for security reasons and issues of ownership, it would be better to have people sign up for their own accounts. Especially if you give them any editing rights, as this could lead to problems otherwise. You could plausibly create an account yourself and give the details to anyone you wanted – but this is definitely not recommended. If you’d like further control over your blog (beyond the capabilities of the one you have on WordPress.com), you might want to consider self hosting your own WordPress blog rather than using the WordPress.com service.
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April 4, 2009 at 11:49 am |
Is there any way to have 200+ individuals, each with their own username and password that I select, be able to access posts I create (only)and have them alerted to new posts through an RSS feed? Private? Password Protected? WHAT?! So very confused….
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April 6, 2009 at 8:12 am |
For 200+ individuals, you can upgrade to “Unlimited Private Users” from the upgrades tab of your WordPress.com blog (for self-hosted blogs you wouldn’t need to upgrade). You can set your blog to private, but private blogs aren’t able to send out RSS notifications. See this forum entry for more information. If you’re self-hosting there are plugin solutions to this problem (setting up private RSS feeds) – running a search from the plugins browser of a self-hosted blog for “private feed” “private RSS” etc
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April 13, 2009 at 10:24 pm |
Hi. Like the others I am having my blog be private and just for a certain group. What I can’t determine is whether I still need to mark each post as private or does making the blog private mean that I leave the individual posts as public?
Thanks for any help.
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April 14, 2009 at 4:15 am |
If your blog is set to private, members have to log in to read it. Anyone trying to read the blog will just see a login screen at your URL – all of the content is hidden.
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May 21, 2009 at 2:32 pm |
If I’m setting up a blog as private for invited-only users, is it a problem to use a template (Regulus) which has RSS feed buttons. I wonder if it would be possible for an invited user to enable the RSS feed on another site, thereby the supposedly “private” posts are publicly fed? Thanks for any advice.
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June 22, 2009 at 1:56 am |
I have just read all of this and very very confused. I want to create a company blog that only staff members can see. I dont want to ask them to have to set up their own wordpress page. Its hard enough getting them to go to the blog, let alone creating that kind of barrier. I have read all the above posts and still dont understand how to simply, make my blog private and allow staff members to add blog entries, comment etc. It is for internal comms only. The i want to add an RSS feed in Outlook that will link back to the blog. Help!!
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June 22, 2009 at 2:28 am |
It’s possible to sign up for a WordPress.com account without setting up a blog of your own – this is an option in the 1-2 minute sign-up process – all that’s really needed here is an email address, username and password. Having an account is required is for security and liability purposes. If you’re running a self-installed version of WordPress there are various plugins that allow you to create member-only sites – run a search in your plugin browser for “members” and you’ll be presented with some options here.
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July 13, 2009 at 2:16 pm |
Thanks. Good article
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July 20, 2009 at 1:54 am |
Hi. I would like to make my blog viewable to the public, but make individual posts password protected. However, it seems that by setting the main page to public, and the posts to protected, it makes everything protected and no one can view it at all, not even the main page. How do I resolve this?
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July 20, 2009 at 1:59 am |
Hi. Another note on my above post. I’ve already tried setting the entire blog to public in settings but it makes everything viewable, even the posts I have set as password protected. I just thought I should mention this since the instructional video says that it will resolve my issue… but it doesn’t.
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July 20, 2009 at 4:15 am |
Are you using self-hosted WordPress or a blog hosted at WordPress.com?
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July 20, 2009 at 4:57 am |
It’s hosted at wordpress.com.
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July 21, 2009 at 2:17 am |
You’ll want the blog to be set to publicly viewable. You can do this with Privacy Settings, which are detailed here.
Once you’ve set that, you want to make sure you’ve set any posts you wish to be privately locked with a password. You can find more details on that control here. (It sounds like you’ve done this already and have a good grasp of it, but it never hurts to double-check.)
If you’re still having issues with the combination of Privacy Settings and post password protection, please either ask a question in the WordPress.com Support forums or drop our Support team a line and someone will be happy to help you.
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August 10, 2009 at 3:14 am |
Is there a way to lock my pictures so no one is able to copy them off of my blog? I don’t want to go private because it will be such a pain for people to log-on to view my blog, but don’t like others trying to copy pictures of my kid and do things like putting your kid up for adoption on craigslist (in the news).
Are you working on creating an easier way like blogger has setup for people to view a private wordpress blog?
Thanks for your help
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August 10, 2009 at 1:20 pm |
There’s a good forum thread here on the topic of images and protecting them. The short answer is that it doesn’t matter what you do to try and protect them; images that are publicly viewable on the web can pretty easily be copied or duplicated if someone wants to do so.
If you’re interested in seeing different privacy settings on WordPress.com, the best place for you to indicate that is on those same forums. There’s a forum dedicated to ideas and suggestions for WordPress.com.
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August 10, 2009 at 11:48 pm |
Nothing will protect your images, no plugin beats a combo of PrintScreen (key on your keyboard) and some basic photoshop skills.
be careful what images you publish. that’s all…
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October 29, 2009 at 8:57 pm |
This post and article might be useful if it weren’t for the immovable ad that blocks pretty much 1/4 of the entire screen! I can’t even figure out how to get rid of the bloody ad! Talk about worthless clickthrough ads.
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October 30, 2009 at 2:04 am |
Can you tell me more about the advertisement you were seeing?
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December 17, 2009 at 12:59 pm |
Great video. Thanks for the help!
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January 18, 2010 at 6:05 pm |
Great video but people going to my private blog are asked for a password as a well as a username. Where do I set this password
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January 22, 2010 at 8:46 pm |
When making an entire blog private, anyone you want to have access to the blog will need a WordPress.com username. Please see http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/privacy-settings for more information.
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February 1, 2010 at 9:59 pm |
I want my entire blog to be private except for the users I choose. I added a user and they still can not view my blog???
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February 8, 2010 at 8:02 pm |
You should make sure that you have given them a role with sufficient permission to see other people’s posts.
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February 13, 2010 at 3:37 am |
I have installed wordpress 2.9.1 on my site. I would like to limit content access to selected users only. This privacy option doesn’t seem to be there.
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February 16, 2010 at 7:46 pm |
The privacy option you see in this video is available on WordPress.com only. If you’d like to have this kind of option on a self-hosted blog, you should be able to find any one of a number of plugins in the directory that will help you with this.
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February 14, 2010 at 2:21 pm |
How do I take a username off my list of users who can see my blog?
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February 16, 2010 at 9:38 pm |
If you to go Settings > Privacy, there should be small controls there to remove users from your allowed list.
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January 12, 2011 at 12:35 pm |
Hi:
after reading all the above I’m still confused,I’m trying to set my blog to be private and give access to only few ppl to read, I followed the video went to “privacy setting” choose the last option, and “add Used” and it only allowed me to add 2 names there??
also after i add their names, how can they read my blog? will they need my permission again ?
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January 28, 2011 at 9:10 pm |
Is there an easy way to create a WordPress blog that is for CEO to Employee communications only (where the company employees are the ONLY people who can view this blog) and no one without a company email address can see it?
Or does it require some special Microsoft Hosted Exchange development work? And if so, how much?
Isn’t there a simple plug-in that could do this (and ensure only company emails work for logging into it?)
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February 8, 2011 at 11:33 am |
In WordPress.com it’s as simple as setting your blog to private and inviting users by email from the Settings > Privacy menu.
For a self hosted solution (including behind the firewall), you can add similar functionality by searching for a plugin from the Plugins> Add New menu that will give you the same effect. One option I’ve used in the past is the “Members Only” plugin which should do what you’re looking to.
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July 3, 2011 at 12:17 am |
Quick and simple, good video.
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February 14, 2013 at 2:25 pm |
When a blog has gone to private, does pre-private-content still come up? I can’t tell because when I’m logged into my own computer I still see everything. In other words, is there a way to take a blog off the internet completely without the final step of removing it completely, also from Google search? Thanks in advance.
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September 19, 2013 at 10:34 am |
There is no Privacy option in my “Setting” and I am logged in as the Super Admin account! Is it possible that one of the installed plugins has removed that from the options!?
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November 22, 2013 at 11:35 am |
same here, there is no privacy in my settings. but really I would like to know how to either create another blog/post page that I can password protect or put a password on the entire blog, I would like to have it just on the blog page but I will do the other way if I have to. Thank you!
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