The posts you create on a WordPress blog/website are visible publicly by default. But sometimes you may want some posts not to be visible to everyone. WordPress has an inbuilt functionality for this purpose also. While you create a post you can mark it Password Protected or Private. Only authorized people will be able to see this post. It will not be visible to public visitors as well as to the search engines.

Why Would You Want A Page or Post To Be Private :

There can be multiple reasons as to why you want to make a post private. Let’s say you are a consultant and provide very useful information which can be beneficial for others, but you don’t want to throw it away for free. You would like to keep it on a private page so everyone won’t be able to view it. Only people who paid you and you have provided them access will be able to see them.  Similarly, there can be other reason to think of the same.

Levels of Controlling The Visibility of Post on WordPress Website :

By default all the pages and posts are public but WordPress provides a way to mark the visibility level of each post or page. You can set in on each page while creating it or change it later as and when needed. Let’s discuss about the type of visibility levels provided by WordPress :

1. Public Post or Page – It is the default visibility level. All posts and pages will be visible to everyone by default. All the content which you think should be read and seen by all should be left in this default level only. You will always need few posts or pages as public in your WordPress website. If you make all the pages non-public then your website will not remain accessible at all for users as well as for search engines.
2. Password Protected Post – If you want that only a specific set of people with a particular password will only be able to read your post, you can mark the post as password protected. If someone on your website clicks on the post’s link on your website, they will be prompted with a password box. Once they enter the password, then only they will be able to read the post. This type of posts is mostly confidential documents like contracts or study materials which you want only a limited number of people can read. We will see in this article ahead that how to make a post a password protected.
3. Private Post –  Instead of setting a password on the post you can mark it as a private post. Once you mark it private only visitors who are logged in will be able to see the post. You can also define the role of the users who can see this post. In this process, you will not need to distribute the password to the readers. Also if you are running a membership website where some content is public and other is private, this will be highly useful. Let’s see how to make a post private.

Exceptions – It is to be noted that if you have multiple admins or editors on your website, they will be able to see all the posts irrespective of their visibility level. They will not need a password to see the password protected posts and will be obviously able to see the private posts as they are registered users on your website. They will also be able to change the visibility level of your pages or posts. So you must be careful while making a post private in a multi-admin environment.

How To Make a Post Password Protected – To make a post password protected you should follow the following steps :

1. Log into your admin panel

2. Open the post in edit mode which you want to make as password protected

3.  In the right column you will see the Visibility option in the Publish section as shown in the image below:

4. Click on the Edit link and you will see the following options :

5. You can now change the visibility level to Password Protected or Private as you feel necessary. Click ok button.

6. Then you need to update the post/page by pressing the update button.

Once you make this change, this particular post won’t be accessible to the public. Only people with Password or those who are registered on the website will be able to see this post.

Best Use Case Scenario For Private Post :

To make the best use of the private post, you have to restrict the registration process of your website. No one should be able to register without your permission. For this, you can go to your WordPress Website settings and untick the Anyone Can Register option. Once you do this none would be able to register themselves on your website. For those whom you want to grant access to your Private posts, you can register them yourself by making use of the create user functionality in your admin panel. Thus only those whom you want would be registered and will be able to see the Private posts on your website.

Best Use Case Scenario For Password Protected Post :

Making use of it is simpler. Simply provide the password only to those people whom you want to see these posts. When they try to see these posts, they will be prompted with a password box. Only after filling that password they will be able to watch this post. Though you should be careful that some people may distribute this password to more people like their friends and you may start getting unwanted visitors. To tackle this you should keep changing the passwords to such posts and send it to the respective user when they request. It will surely not resolve the issue but may work as a deterrent for misuse.

Hope you got the idea of visibility level of WordPress Post/pages from this article. And also now you will be able to create a private and password protected post on your site. Please let me know of your queries in comments.