I use the plugin “Private WordPress” By Jiehan Zheng on all blogs that I’m developing and and I love it. The Plugin puts up a temporary page sorry.html that you can customize = like this = http://dunsky.info/wp-content/plugins/private-wordpress/sorry.html
You have options in the plugin.
Is this what you were looking for?
That could be what I’m looking for.
Is it possible for search engines (for instance, Google) to still “crawl” the blog and link posts across the Internet?
After my initial post, I found this excerpt from the WordPress Codex;
“Hiding The Entire WordPress Blog-
Currently the functionality to hide your entire blog from public view, or to restrict it to certain users, is not part of the core WordPress product. There are possible plans to introduce this functionality into a later version.
There are various WordPress Plugins to restrict the visibility such as Page Restrict.
Alternatively, you could use the .htaccess to restrict who can visit your web site, but this is beyond the scope of this document.”
I checked out the plugin they were talking about, but all is does is allow you to block specific pages to logged in users only, which doesn’t help us since 99% of our readers don’t log in. The plugin you’re talking about, though, may do the trick. I guess the only concern/question is if there is some hidden back door to still view the blog — do you know of one?
Is it in a separate folder? If so you can password protect from cpanel. Also, to prevent spiders (hahaha) there is an option in WordPress Settings… under either general, writing or discussion (cannot remember which).
Hope that helps,
~Shane Hudson
Yes, we have two different installs. I’ll check in and see about locking the folder via cPanel. I think that’s a similar method compared to the “.htaccess” file option.
As for the anti-crawling/spiders option, I think I found it. Check the picture below and let me know if that’s the best option. Seems so, given what it says;
http://i42.tinypic.com/2llf5l5.jpg
Thanks to both of you for the support, I appreciate it!
While I’m here… Any specific books that you’d recommend for someone new to WordPress? It’s going to be a big part of the business by being an active blog, so I’ll need to know more than I currently do. Which isn’t much… 🙁
You checked the right box. I have had a development site for 8 months that only has one mention on I think Bing, so that box does seem to work.
I found WordPress for Dummies by Lisa Sabin-Wilson to be helpful.
Saildude, the development site that you have, was the only thing you did is check that box? That one hit that Bing has on it, would it allow someone to access the entirety of your blog if they managed to find that one link? Because that’s what we’re trying to prevent. Not that we have something terrible to hid, per say, but that we don’t want customers viewing the wrong blog and sharing it with people.
Oh dear, I list three pages and it is in “privacy”… how could I forget that?!
You could indeed do it with .htaccess, I can never remember any of that off the top of my head so usually avoid it… should really learn it, shouldn’t I?
I have never read a wordpress book, books are great but get outdated very very quickly in this industry. I stick to blogs such as Justin Tadlock’s and Lorelle’s.
For support – I simply browse the web and most often will find someone who has the WordPress answer I am looking for. There are so many of us giving advice, sharing experiences and this is what makes WordPress so great – THE COMMUNITY.
Good luck with your projects.
