How to keep site 'private' while developing

  • Unknown's avatar
    cathypenmanwriting · Member ·

    Hi, have been trying WordPress to do a writing site.
    Started by using draft pages, but then you can’t see what the site looks like.
    So selected ‘Make this a private site’ under Settings – however I notice the site has gone live despite this option – why is this??
    I wanted to get it all ready first before publishing.

    Also – very poor formatting options – can’t even seem to force an extra carriage return, ie paragraph – how do you put in an extra blank line? (Eg between poem verses) Whatever I try it seems to remove them on publish – have had to force with a full stop.

    Thanks for any advice.

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • Unknown's avatar
    timethief · Member ·

    To change blog visibility to Private go to > Settings > Reading scroll to Blog Visibility and choose option 3. See the guide here http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/privacy-settings

  • Unknown's avatar
    timethief · Member ·

    If you use the classic editor here Dashboard > Posts > Add New to create your posts what I provide below may be helpful.

    In the classic editor, if you are working in the Visual editor, to get single spacing between paragraphs hold the SHIFT key down and simultaneously click ENTER at the end of the paragraph. If you are working in the Text or HTML editor, a single click of ENTER will give you a single-spaced line, and two clicks of ENTER will result in double spaced lines.

    Blog editors and word processors are not the same and do not work the same way. The web standard is one blank line only, so you cannot add more blank lines by pressing return repeatedly like you would do with a typewriter or in a word processing application. If you want to learn how to format and space your posts and pages see: http://en.support.wordpress.com/advanced-html/

    If you are copying and pasting from a word processing document like Microsoft WORD note that the paste as WORD button was removed from the editor months ago. If you use the Paste as plain text button then a special cleanup process will run to remove any special formatting and HTML tags that may otherwise change your text. http://en.support.wordpress.com/visual-editor/#pasting-text Therefore you have to do you own formatting and spacing.

    Whether or not you are copying and pasting go to > Dashboard > Settings > Writing and enable this setting:
    Formatting
    __ WordPress should correct invalidly nested XHTML automatically
    “save changes”

    IMPORTANT NOTE: When you create a new post, always make sure the Format tool is set to Paragraph before you start typing. It’s in the Visual editor Row 2 first position “style”. See the illustration here http://en.support.wordpress.com/visual-editor/#row-2 If you forget to do that then edit the post, highlight all in the Visual editor, select Paragraph from the Format tool, switch editor to Text then switch back to Visual and click Update.

    Also note raincoaster’s editing tip:

    When you fix the spacing, you have to start at the top and work down. If you start at the bottom and work up, it always double spaces at least one line.

  • Unknown's avatar
    cathypenmanwriting · Member ·

    Hi thanks for your replies.
    I have marked it as ‘make this a private site’ but was confused that it comes up as if live when I put it in my browser address line. Maybe it’s just because it’s me looking though, I suppose I’ll have to trust that other people can’t see it yet.
    On the formatting, I had already tried the shift and enter but though the space is there when you’re editing, it doesn’t show in the published version. Anyway, I’ll read through all your info/links etc and try to understand this better.
    Thanks again.
    Cathy

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