Password Protect Individual Pages

How to Password Protect Individual Pages or Posts

Most PTAs and PTOs keep their website’s content public, but there are times when you might want to password protect just a few pages. Maybe some internal documents or forms, possibly a list of volunteers with contact info that you don’t want the entire internet to have access to. Things like that. This tutorial will explain how to password protect pages and posts on an individual basis. The technique is the same for Pages and Posts, we are going to demonstrate on a Page in this tutorial.

Step 1: Open the Page / Post you wish to Protect

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Go to your full listing of Pages or Posts and click on the Title of the item you wish to password protect to open it up.

Step 2: Click EDIT next to Visibility in the Publish Menu

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Find the Publish Menu in the top right corner of the page. In that module you will see “Visibility: Public” and then an EDIT link. Click the EDIT link.

Step 3: Select Your Visibility Preference

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After you click EDIT, You will see your Visibility Options.

Public: This page is able to be seen by all website visitors

Password Protected: A password must be entered to view this page

Private: Only Administrators and Authorized Users can see the page

To Password Protect the page, select the PASSWORD PROTECTED option and then enter the password you would like to assign. Then click the OK Button.

A few things to keep in mind about the passwords. These are single passwords, every person that views the page will use the same password. These are not multi page passwords. If you unlock one page with a password and go to another password protected page, you will need to enter a password to access it, even if it is the same password. Also know that these pages are password protected and very well hidden, but they are not secure (SSL encryption), so do no load extremely sensitive information like bank account info, confidential personal details, etc. Passwords lock specific pages, not documents, images, etc on those pages. – In other words, search engines can still potentially discover documents and images that are on password protected pages as the page is protected, not the items attached to it. This is important with documents especially as search engines can still find master files, regardless of where they are displayed.

Step 4: Update or Publish your Page

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As with any other change you make, you must UPDATE or PUBLISH the Page / Post for your changes to take effect.

Step 5: Verify your password on the live site

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It’s always a good idea to view your changes in the live website mode to ensure everything looks as you would expect.