automatically password protecting posts

Right. The category to protect would be ID 3 in the example, and the protected post (outside that category) would be post # 123.

I’ve modified the code after running a test on my local wp. Here’s how I set this up.

1. I created a protected post, and saw it was post #2463. I entered that below in the $protected_post variable. I also made sure this post was not in the category I will be protecting.

2. I used the category slug for the category I want to protect. In this case it is ‘society-culture’. I put this in $protected_categories.

When I visit a post in that category, it redirects me to the protected post so that I can enter the password. After I entered a correct password, I can access posts in that category.

add_action( 'wp', 'category_protect' );

if ( ! function_exists( 'category_protect' ) )
{
	function category_protect() {

		global $post;

		if ( ! is_single() ) return false;

		// edit these
		$protected_post = '2463';
		$protected_categories = array('society-culture');
		// stop editing

		$protected = get_post( $protected_post );

		if ( in_category( $protected_categories, $post->ID ) && stripslashes( $_COOKIE['wp-postpass_' . COOKIEHASH] ) != $protected->post_password )
		{
			// you shall not pass! - redirect to the protected post
			wp_safe_redirect( get_permalink( $protected_post ) );
		}

	}
}

It might be possible to add the password form in there instead of a redirect. I haven’t gotten that far with the research and had already spent a bit of time on it. I was kind of hoping someone else might know and would chime in.

Ok I think I got it. Try this one, but you enter the password into this function. What this does is replace your content with the password form if the user doesn’t have a valid password cookie.

add_action( 'wp', 'category_protect' );

if ( ! function_exists( 'category_protect' ) )
{
	function category_protect() {

		global $post;

		if ( ! is_single() ) return false;

		// edit these
		$password = '123';
		$protected_categories = array('society-culture');
		// stop editing

		if ( in_category( $protected_categories, $post->ID ) && stripslashes( $_COOKIE['wp-postpass_' . COOKIEHASH] ) != $password )
		{
			$post->post_content = get_the_password_form();
		}

	}
}

The code above goes into your functions.php file, in your theme folder. It should replace the old code you used before that wasn’t working, so make sure you’ve removed the old code.

Edit the code
1. Change ‘123’ to the password you want to protect category posts.
2. Change ‘society-culture’ to the name of your own category slug for the category you want to protect.

That’s it.

Another possibility for a plugin would be to hook into the publish_post, and if the post is published in a category you wish to protect, it automatically protects the post with the password. Disadvantage: if you change your mind at some point later, you have all those posts in the category that are protected. You would have to manually go through and unprotect them.

The code above in functions.php works, and is better in that you could toggle it on or off globally. Be sure you’re using the code in the post linked below and not the broken code in the posts early in this topic.
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/automatically-password-protecting-posts?replies=12#post-2635048

You know, I didn’t look yet but maybe there were some good category protection plugins already in the repository.

I just checked the info on the home page of the mentioned “s2member” plugin, and it says you can “Can protect individual WordPress® Categories, including content within.”

Now I don’t know what that says, I’d like a simple password-protection too, without forcing users to register to see content.
This is for a family site where they’ll use some birthday or a pet’s name as a password so that only friends and family can see certain pics.

Is it hard to hook in to the outputting process to determine if a post is in a certain category or not?