How can I make my blog accessible to specific non-WordPress Members?
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Hello there,
I need to make a blog accessible to specific individuals who may or may not have an account with WordPress. However I do not want this blog to be public as this will be used to keep colleagues informed of our company expansion overseas.
After looking into this myself I have been unsuccessful in finding a suitable option as most settings seem to run the risk of being accessible by the public. I was hoping to create a URL link that would enable only holders of the link to access the blog, thus allowing me to send this link to my colleagues. Is this method or any other method available in any way?
Thank you.
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi mylondonhomehongkong,
I can only suggest setting a password for every post, and providing that password to anyone who you’d like to give access to. Your readers will only need to enter the password once per browser session!
Here’s a support article that explains more:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/pages/page-visibility/ -
I just wanted to say – thanks for asking this question! I was going to ask the same thing later today. I have a blog that I only want accessible and visible to a small group of people, and the only way I could see of doing this was setting it to private and inviting the people to join. The annoying thing is, as the OP posted, that I really didn’t want for my guests to HAVE to sign up for a WordPress account, just to be able to follow and view the blog.
I have to say, setting a password also seems a bit….unprofessional. If it’s possible to set a blog as private, but to invite people, there’s absolutely no reason why the invitees should have to sign up for a full WP account! I can understand that they may have to register, but it’s silly to expect them to have to create WP blogs, just to read another one.
I’m hoping there will be another option?
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They don’t have to create WP blogs.
They DO have to sign in to their WP account, or how does WP know who is authorized and who is not?
WordPress.org of course allows you to mix and match and accept authorization logins from other social and web platforms, but it’s more dangerous to outsource your user logins than you might imagine.
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Thanks raincoaster. Maybe I’m missing something obvious here. I completely get that the guests would need to be registered with a WP account so that the system recognises their allowed permissions etc – but – I have tested this myself with an alternative ‘user’ on a different email address, and when you click the invitation in the email that is sent, it takes you to the WP registration page, where it asks you to set / register a WP blog address, with all the malarky that that entails.
This is the bit that I find annoying, as there should be the option to register just as a reader, without having to create a blog of their own. This is just an unnecessary step.
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To clarify, I’ll be inviting non-WP members. And they will (hopefully) be registering purley to read my blog. Hence, they will not need, or want to, create a blog of their own, as seems to be required to register.
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You used to be able to register just as a user, without a blog. Although they always made the “no, just the account, not the blog” option much smaller.
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I’ve found a couple of other threads about this same issue and it does seem that the options for this are a bit limited and inconvenient. I see several people in the same situation as me, where they want their blog to be totally private and accesible only to invited viewers, but it seems ludicrous to me that those guests then have to actually create a blog when they accept an emailed invitation that brings them to the WP registration page. There really needs to be a ‘View Only’ registration option. I can see that this is going to put off a lot of people that I want to add as viewing guests, as they include my 70 yr old mother, and several non-techie folks who will have no interest in setting up a blog, and will actually find the requirement to do so very off-putting, in order just to read something I have invited them to.
I would really urge any WP admins reading this to look at this as there needs to be a ‘View Only’ registration option that doesn’t involve people having to create unwanted blogs.
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ETA – I am aware that there is the other option of passwording stuff, but from the way I understand it, this sounds messy and inconvenient as it relies on having every individual section of the blog and every post passworded. This just seems such an unnecessarily long-winded and inefficient way of doing things.
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Finding more and more threads on this subject now so it certainly seems that for now at least, folks have to register a blog in order to access a private site (if the adin doesn’t want to mess about with passwording everything – which, as someone pointed out, isn’t failsafe).
This is a real shame as I can see that having to create a blog will prevent several of my invited guests from bothering to continue with the registration.
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