Help needed with "Requested access to your private site"

  • Unknown's avatar
    stevetam75 · Member ·

    I’m helping friends setup a wordpress.com site and it’s setup as private. They’ve invited people and everything’s great.

    However, it seems some of those invited shared the link with others and we got an e-mail that: WordPress.com user ‘<name>’ requested access to view your private site

    We want to let friends of invitees in.

    I’ve read old posts that it’s not possible to lookup the user on wordpress.com nor discover their e-mail. I’m surprised by the inability to even respond to the user. Has anything changed over the years?

    Or is there some workaround like can I change the text the users see (“This site is marked private by its owner. If you would like to view it, you’ll need two things” to add a way for them to send me who they are), or a way to let them add a note to me, a way to respond to them? Allow for a standard password?

    I’m guessing there are plug-ins to help, but we’re starting with the base version to test a concept and if it works would upgrade to one of the plans.

    Thanks

  • supernovia · Staff ·

    Hi @stevetam75,

    We want to let friends of invitees in.

    I’ve read old posts that it’s not possible to lookup the user on wordpress.com nor discover their e-mail. I’m surprised by the inability to even respond to the user. Has anything changed over the years?

    Correct — but you shouldn’t need to know their username name and their email address. If you have one or the other, that will do. You can enter it in the invitation area separated by commas as usual.

    Or is there some workaround like can I change the text the users see (“This site is marked private by its owner. If you would like to view it, you’ll need two things” to add a way for them to send me who they are), or a way to let them add a note to me, a way to respond to them? Allow for a standard password?

    There is not, but this is a great idea! I’ll make sure it gets filed so it can be considered next time someone’s updating that functionality.

    Lastly, could you clarify which site you need help with? I don’t see any private sites associated with this account, and I want to be sure I’m giving the right advice. A site hosted elsewhere would need different ideas.

    Thanks in advance!

  • Unknown's avatar
    stevetam75 · Member ·

    Hi Supernovia, thanks for your message. That’s right this is not a site attached to my account. I’m helping someone else who isn’t handy with WordPress.

    I understand your point about not needing to know both username and e-mail addresses. But it wasn’t that I want to send an invite. Rather I want to find who sent the invite somehow. So if there was a way to find that info it would help.

    Anyways thanks for submitting the request you mentioned. Having that would help know who’s making the request. It’s a pretty standard way that I’ve seen in other access request apps.

  • kokkieh · Staff ·

    Rather I want to find who sent the invite somehow. So if there was a way to find that info it would help.

    Thanks for clarifying.

    There is no way to find that information, though. We don’t reveal the email address attached to a WordPress.com account to third parties under any circumstances. The only place you’d be able to see another WordPress.com user’s email is if they commented on your site – the comments panel in the dashboard lists the username and email address of commenters – but in that case it’s the commenter themselves providing the information to you.

    So unless their username is their real name, or they have a public display name that’s their real name, there’s no way to see more information about the person who requested the invitation.

    One thing you can try: append wordpress.com to the username – if the person who requested the invite has a site at their username.wordpress.com address, that might give you a clue who they are.

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