How to create a private blog on WordPress – Beginners Guide

This is a quick and simple guide on how to create a private blog on WordPress and hidden from search engines. You can create a private blog on WordPress from your dashboard. Navigate to Settings, then select privacy. Three different options will appear, change the settings to private. I have previously written an article on how to start a successful blog for beginners.

Now you can make your blog private. It is possible with monetized blogs. It can be used to share your thoughts and travel experience with family and friends.

Most people enjoy their blogs going live and indexed by search engines for more visitors, but others prefer WordPress private blogs. Anyone can make WordPress blog private because of the flexible nature of WordPress blog design and WordPress private plugins.

What is WordPress Private blog page and post?

WordPress private blog posts and pages are those parts of your blog that are not accessible to the public. The content on a WordPress private blog is not visible to blog visitors, even if they have access to the post or page URL.

Who can see WordPress blog pages and posts?

The pages or posts under WordPress page visibility private can only be seen by authorized users who have access to the username and password of the dashboard. This, to some extent, is contradictory to the WordPress original function, which is content publication. But the fact remains that certain things are meant to stay private.

Let’s say you want to train your staff as a manager, and it won’t be proper to start sharing your organization’s secret information with outsiders.

What are the reasons why people create a private blog?

Blogs are medium for communication, and not everything you publish should go public, especially the content of internal organization blogs. Luckily, WordPress has understood your purpose of going private. A WordPress private blog is suitable for hiding your content and assigning roles to different users who can access your private blog. But you have to take caution when sharing some delicate information. Don’t forget your competitors are always watching. After all, it’s the internet, and you can’t be 100% guaranteed that your information is safe.

People disable comments on WordPress and publish WordPress private posts for different reasons. Perhaps you want to share your baby photos, but to a selected group of family members and friends, or your night out pictures with a few friends without family members having access. It can be some work ideas you are planning. You won’t want your competitors to gain access. More popular in this category is a classroom teacher who wants to share ideas with his students only. You can share some private opinion as an individual, and you don’t want the entire internet to have access.

How can I create a WordPress private blog?

There are different methods you can you to make your WordPress blog content private. You can choose to make one or more posts private instead of the entire blog. Follow the information below to set up a WordPress category in your blog.

You can choose to make your previous post in your blog private or create a fresh private blog post. It all depends on your target audience and the purpose you are creating the post. It is impossible to protect the post from specific archives and web directories, but you can restrict people from accessing them anytime you want. Follow the steps below to private your WordPress blog post.

How to make your Previous WordPress post private?

1. Login to your WordPress Dashboard
2. Click edit the one you would like to make private from the list of post
3. Look for visibility settings and change them from public to private.

In this setting, you can choose those who will have access to the post. You can make it visible to only admins, editors or pick a login password.

How to write a private blog post from scratch?

If you are creating a fresh blog post, you can choose to make it private. Follow the steps below:

1. From the right-hand corner of your screen, locate private
2. You will see publishing options set to visibility
3. Please change it to private
4. You can choose to add a password, depending on your target audience.

Please note, you don’t need to add a password before your post can be private. The moment you change your post visibility to private, no search engine will index it. The post will be accessible to you, other admins, editors, or those permitted to view it. The use of a password allows easy access to those you wish to share your post content with.

Steps to create a WordPress private blog for beginners

Some people prefer making their posts private, but others choose to create a WordPress private blog and make the whole content private for different reasons. These reasons could be the privacy of such information, sharing photos with some group members, or a personal diary where you store your private life events. Whichever reason you are creating a WordPress private blog, it’s simple and easy to create, even as a beginner.

I will advise you to make your WordPress blog private from creating it, especially as a beginner. The reason for this is simple. When you start a public WordPress blog and register it on different search engines, you will notice your articles are being indexed and made available to the entire public. Some web directories store some of your content as snapshots during this period, while others keep them as archives.

Anytime you decide to change your blog privacy setting from public visibility to private, this action will only prevent search engines from indexing your post, either new or old. But the snapshots and archives available online will be retained.

It will take a few minutes for these privacy settings to take effect; links from different search engines can’t be used to access your blog content.

These steps will make your entire blog anonymous:

1. Login to your WordPress dashboard
2. Navigate to click settings
3. You will find three different options (Public, hidden, and private) there
4. Change the settings to private.

When you save the privacy settings, all search engines will no longer redirect any traffic to your site, and no one can visit your blog to read your content. You can choose other people who will have access to your blog using the following settings:

1. Go to your WordPress dashboard
2. Navigate and click on my sites
3. Click on people and add.

If you follow this step, you will see an option to add a new user’s email or WordPress username. You can also add their information. When you invite someone to your private blog, you will have to delegate a user’s role. This role will determine the level of information they can have access to. Check out the available roles below:

How to Assign roles to WordPress private blog users

1. Administrator

Administrators of a WordPress private blog can have access, view, and change any WordPress blog design. Admins have the right to do anything with your blog. For this reason, be careful how you choose new administrators in your blog.

2. Editor

Editors on a WordPress private blog can view and edit blog posts and comments written by any user, including the admins.

3. Author

Authors in your WordPress private blog has the right to view all blog post, comment, and publish fresh content with their username as a byline.

4. Viewer

A private blog view is given a password by Admins that can view all blog posts and leave a comment. That’s all.

5. Contributor

Similar to the right of an author, a contributor in your WordPress private blog can view a post, comment, and post fresh content through their WordPress username as a byline. Although the role of a contributor is related to that of an author, there is a slight difference. A contributor does not have the right to upload media on a private blog or remove comments.

You can easily change a person’s access to your private blog. Navigate to the user and scroll down to the person’s username. Modify the access or delete it completely.

Advantages of WordPress Private blog

We all know private blogs are small websites with high-quality content that users find helpful and educative. WordPress private blog has existed for a while now, but some people still doubt if such a website exists. I’m not surprised because it’s not seen on search engine results and other web directories. Private blogs are mostly organizational blogs that contain secret information that should not be revealed to the public. If It’s true everyone can’t access this blog, how then is it relevant?

Don’t hurry to forget the main purpose of blogging, which is to share information or as a medium of communication with a defined audience. A private blog already had an audience before it was created, and the admins have chosen to limit its functions and impact to them. See some of these advantages below.

1. Total control over things

WordPress features to power a WordPress private blog. These tools help the admins to make change things to suit their level of privacy. They have already assigned roles to people who will have access to the blog. It gives them total control over everything.

They don’t need to start giving out special instructions or moderating comments. Their audience is defined, and they know what to expect from them. Unlike a public or a corporate blog where anyone can jump into your comment session and publish what they like, competitors can even hire people to write comments that will tarnish your brand’s image.

2. Authority and Trust transfer

You can publish different content on your private blog. Examples of such content may include; private lessons from teachers, secret group activities, training for administrative staff, etc. Your blog viewers will read this content and feel thankful. It will build trust, giving you a significant advantage and the courage to write higher authority content.

3. Boost the relationship among the workforce

When the entire staff gets information through a particular medium, they see themselves as one. With this, staff can easily see clarity on issues they don’t understand. I think a private blog should be encouraged among bigger establishments. I know how relevant a corporate blog is to organizations, but it does not resolve issues within the organization. Instead, it targets potential customers who will patronize their services or purchase their products.

4. It makes it easy to conduct staff training

Some WordPress private blogs are designed for training origination staff. This medium will help reduce the cost of organizing an offline seminar and reduce the stress of traveling to training centers. Innovative ideas can also be shared through this medium to boost organizational productivity. I don’t think any business owner will like to miss out on this opportunity of WordPress private blog.

Disadvantages of WordPress private blog

1. It is limited in nature

Private blogs are limited blogs. They don’t allow access to the public due to this defying the major purpose of blogging: to make information available to everyone on the internet. Organizations that use such blog is not impacting the younger generation on how to become an expert in their industry.

2. It’s not viable in search engine

From the moment you change the visibility of your WordPress blog to private, search engines will no longer have access to it. And those searching for information on the topics of your blog won’t have access to it. Try to imagine what the internet will look like without search engines? It will be boring, education and learning process will be slow. This is the harm private blog has caused everyone on the internet.

3. Limited income opportunity

With the increase in competition in today’s online business world, blogs have become a prominent medium for advertisement, but private blogs do not meet the requirements for displaying adverts. Online marketing is a game of targeted numbers. WordPress private blogs lack these numbers; They are not even accessible by the public. Not to talk of displaying advert on them.

4. It doesn’t drive much engagement

People quickly get tired of reading from companies’ internal blogs. The post has the same uniform format, no room for creativity, and does not compel readers to visit. Most of the readers of Private blogs return to it because it is compulsory to their job, not because they gain something from it.