As a WordPress blogger, if you want to your blog to be read only by families, friends or specific groups of people, you can make it private to prevent the entire web world from peeking at your personal life.
As the result, unauthorized visitors cannot browse any content of the blog. For anyone who tries to visit the blog, then they need to be a member or get your permission to have access.
Making a Private Blog with WordPress.com
WordPress.com is a blog web host, and it offers free blog hosting for registered users. But users are not allowed upload themes, plugins and ads only if they pay upgrades, VIP services.
If you are using WordPress.com, it is quite easy to change your private setting through Settings, Site Visibility. In that reading page, you can see the selections.
- Allow search engines to index this site
- Discourage search engines from indexing this site
- I would like my site to be private, visible only to users I choose
Choosing the last selection, then your blog would be set to private. After making it private, only those whom you invite them to be a viewer will be able to view your private blog.
To invite viewers, go to Users and choose Invite New section, add the users’ email address or WordPress.com username. Then they will receive an invitation, the entire process is complete after they click the Accept button.
Making a Private Blog with WordPress.org
Compared to WordPress.com, WordPress.org provides more freedom for users. This is where users can download and install the WordPress apps, themes and plugins for free, but users have to find a WordPresss hosting provider and domain name because it does not host the website for them.
Actually, help limit it to certain viewers or hide your whole blog from the public is not part of the key work of WordPress.org, thus, the process to make a private blog is not as just simple.
One of the feasible ways is to navigate to the Setting section of your WordPress dashboard and choose the Privacy link to configure settings which are related to your blog’s visibility to search engines. However, this setting cannot ensure that search engines will not index your blog.
To fully make your blog private, you need to get assistance from some plugins.
- Page Restrict: a useful plugin that you can use to restrict all or certain pages or posts to logged-in users.
- Password Protected: one of most popular and the best plugins to allow you make your blog private by setting a single password. Note that the plugin does not protect pictures and uploaded files so if visitors enter the exact URL, they will still be accessible.