Public Frontpage and Private blog

  • Unknown's avatar
    arfwewebsite · Member ·

    I have leased the custom domain “arfwe.org” through WordPress. I would like to have a front page named “arfwe.org” or “arfwe.org/welcome” that would be publicly accessible. It would describe what our organization does and how to join it. I would also like to have all of the blog posts and other pages to have a visibility of private, ie accessible by invitation only,

    Thanks in advance,
    T. Young, site administrator (as it was)

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

  • Unknown's avatar
    gracejiyoung · Member ·

    Hi there,

    I see that you have a Front page set for your site: http://arfwe.org/

    So it wouldn’t be possible to have an actual log-in and have people view your site, but what you can do is Password Protect your pages/posts. Then you can have people contact you via a Contact Form for the password.

    For example if you create/edit a post go to the Publish module and click on Edit next to Visibility. You will be able to create a password to view the site as seen here:

    Screen Shot

    You can also add a Contact Form via this support guide:

    http://en.support.wordpress.com/contact-form/

    Let me know if you have any questions with this!

  • Unknown's avatar
    arfwewebsite · Member ·

    Thanks for responding so quickly. The password strategy will not be accepted well by my contributors and readers. Let me say that I am learning and designing as I go and have the expectation and a lot of flexibility to change things so any possible solution is worth entertaining.

    It appears to me that one approach is to use a second wordpress site for public access leaving the current upgraded site for the blog i.e. I would make the whole site private. The complication is how can I associate the public site and the private site with my domain name? Is use of a sub domain a possible solution? If so, what are the costs and how do I do it? Other ideas….?

    Thanks,
    T. Young

  • Unknown's avatar
    gracejiyoung · Member ·

    Hi there,

    Sure! A subdomain is an option you can try. It is $13/year and you can set it up using this support guide:

    Map a Subdomain

    Feel free to reach out if you have any questions!

  • Unknown's avatar
    arfwewebsite · Member ·

    Grace, I am a bit confounded by the support pages and the complexity of setting up a sub-domain so need to ask a couple of questions…

    I currently have 2 active sites:
    arfweblog.wordpress.com. This site has been upgraded to premium and is associated with the domain name arfwe.org. I intend to make this entire site private (it is public now for testing) accessible only by invitation.

    arfwewelcome.wordpress.com. This site is a free site. I intend this site to be public. I want it to be accessible as a subdomain of arfwe.org named welcome.arfwe.org. It will provide information to the public about how to subscribe to the the private site, afwe.org.

    Trying to follow the support pages, I added a cname record to mydomains to set up the alias welcome.arfwe.org pointing to arfwewelcome.wordpress.com. I did not receive any prompts for a $13 payment so I suspect I did something wrong. This seems to be verified because using the cname alias (welcome.arfwe.org) as a URL takes me to arfwe.org.

    Is what I’m trying to do even possible and if so can you give me pointers?

    Thanks,
    T.

  • Unknown's avatar
    gracejiyoung · Member ·

    Hi there,

    So after you set up the CNAME record, please go into the Dashboard of arfwewelcome.wordpress.com and go to Store > My Domains. Then, add the domain mapping for the subdomain: welcome.arfwe.org.

    Then you should be set!

    Cheers!

  • Unknown's avatar
    arfwewebsite · Member ·

    That did it! I’m off to the races. Thanks for all your help.

    T.

  • Unknown's avatar
    gracejiyoung · Member ·

    You’re very welcome!

    Cheers!

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