Are you wondering how to make your WordPress site private? This post shows you the two easiest methods with a step-by-step guide.
Why do you need to make your WordPress site private?
There are several reasons why people want to keep their site private. For example, they may only want to share their blog with particular family members or friends. Or, if you only want to use WordPress for training purposes or to develop your thoughts without an audience, you can also make your entire blog private.
How to make your WordPress site private?
Unfortunately, WordPress doesn’t offer an option to make your whole site private. However, the developers have designed tons of useful plugins that help you hide your blog or site from the public. In today’s tutorial, we will demonstrate some methods with excellent plugins. Now, let’s follow the step-by-step guide below to prevent Google and other people from seeing your site.
Solutions
Method 1: Make your blog posts/pages private without plugins
This method is extremely simple and doesn’t require any plugins. You can start from any post on your WordPress dashboard.
Step 1: Go to Posts> All posts on your dashboard and hover over the published post that you want to make private. Click on the “Edit” option.
Step 2: Take a look at the right-hand sidebar; you can see that your post is currently in public mode. Just click on the “Edit” option.
Next, this action will open a menu with options including “Password protected” and “Private“. If you click on the “Private” option, only administrators and editors can view this post. Therefore, we highly recommend choosing Password Protected and setting a password for that post in the given field. Don’t forget to click on the “Update” button to save your changes (or Publish, if it is a new post).
Then share the password with the people you want to see your post.
After that, when users visit your website, these protected posts will appear as in the screenshot below.
Note: The process of making your pages private is exactly the same as it is for your posts. You only need to navigate to Pages>All pages and repeat the same steps as for your posts.
Method 2: Using a plugin to make your whole site private
There are numerous WordPress privacy plugins available today. Among them, My Private site is considered one of the best plugins to make your entire site private. No one will be able to see your website even if they know the URL. Now, let’s follow the steps below.
Step 1: Just like with other plugins, you first need to install and activate this plugin. You go to Plugins> Add New, search for the plugin’s name in the search bar, click on the “Install Now” button, and activate it.
Step 2: Now, visit the My Private site page> Site Privacy Tab on your dashboard. On the next screen, you will see the “Enable login privacy” option. Tick this option and click on the “Save Privacy Status” button.
Now your website is completely locked down. No one can access your site until they are given an account with a username and password. Therefore, you need to create a user account to access your site.
Step 3: Adding users
Now, you can enable anyone to register on your website as a Subscriber by adding a new user account.
Go to Users> Add New. Now, fill in the required fields, including Username and Email. You can leave the other fields empty.
In addition, WordPress will randomly create a password for the user, but you can also set it manually. Once all the information is ready, click on the “Add New User” button, and WordPress will automatically send the username and password to the email address that you provided.
Your website is now protected. Anyone who wants to access your site needs to enter the right username and password that have been provided by the admin.
Summary
We have covered the two easiest methods to keep your site private. We hope this post has shown you how to make your WordPress site private by yourself with little effort. This is also a great method to share your valuable content with special people on your own website.
If you have any questions, please leave a comment in the box below and we will reply to you as soon as possible. If this post is useful for you, don’t forget to share it with your friends.
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