Password-protecting your WordPress blog

Before leaving on holiday, I asked what tutorials or things I could write about to help bloggers. One commented:

New to WordPress… Wish I knew how to password protect my entire blog. Would love for people I only know to read my blog. Don’t know how to do this.

In this post I’ll explain five ways of password-protecting your WordPress blog. None of them are foolproof (is anything?) and if you’re wanting some heavy-duty protection, you should look at putting your site on a secure connection (https).

1. Password-protecting everything using an .htaccess file. If you’re not familiar with editing .htaccess files yourself, try checking with your site host’s control panel for password protection, e.g. CPanel, Plesk. You may need to regenerate your permalinks afterwards in WordPress by going to Options > Permalinks > Update Permalink Structure.
2. Password-protecting all posts/pages/feeds but not your images or stylesheet by installing the Registered only plugin: read the install instructions then download the plugin.
3. Password-protecting by user-level. Install the Post Levels plugin: right-click and save this plugin and then follow the standard plugin installation instructions. This enables only members with a particular user level (or higher) to view the post.
4. Password-protecting each post individually (1) – you can still see the design but not the content of an individual post unless you have a special password. Type into the “Password-Protect box” on the right hand sidebar when writing or editing a post in WordPress. Give out this password to the people you want to view it.
5. Password-protecting each post individually (2) – you can still see the design but not the content of an individual post unless you the post’s author. Change the Post Status to “Private”. When you re-save the post, be careful not to press the “Publish” button or it won’t be private anymore! Just press “Save” or “Save and Continue Editing”.