Settings »Privacy Settings

Table of Contents

Privacy Options
Viewing a Private Site
Changing a Site with Followers from Public To Private
New Sites are Private by Default

The Site Privacy setting controls who can view your site, allowing you to make the site private or public. To access this setting, go to My Site → Settings and look for Privacy on the General tab.

When you first create your site, by default the site will be Private. In order to launch your site, you will need to verify your email address.

Click here to learn more.

Watch the video below for a quick overview of how it works, and read below for more examples and settings.

Privacy Options

1. Public. This is the setting used by most sites. It allows everyone to see your site and enables your site to be included in search engine results and other content sites.
2. Hidden. If you want all human visitors to be able to see your site, but don’t want your site to appear in search engines, this option will block most web crawlers for search engines. (Please note, however, that not all search engines respect this setting.)
3. Private. Select this option to make your site private. If you want specific people to be able to view it (and add comments, if you’ve enabled them), you’ll need to invite them to be a viewer.

If you have the Business plan, you may not see the Private setting. Instead, you can search for a Plugin that will allow you to put up a maintenance or coming soon page.

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Viewing a Private Site

When you first create your site, by default the site will be Private. In order to launch your site, you will need to verify your email address. You will not be able to invite viewers to a private site until your email address is verified.

Click here to learn more.

If you’d like to add viewers to a private site, please follow the invitation instructions on this page.

After marking your site as private, visitors will see a “Protected Blog” page if they’re not logged into their WordPress.com account when trying to view your site. All viewers added to a private site must have a WordPress.com account — this ensures that only those people you’ve authorized are able to view it:

You can request access to a private site by clicking on the “Request an invite” link when attempting to visit a private site while logged into your WordPress.com account.

Remember, it’s up to the site owner to decide who can and cannot have access. Requesting access means that you are simply asking the site owner to consider adding you as a viewer.

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Changing a Site with Followers from Public To Private

If your site is public but you’d like to make it private, you can change the settings to private at any time by following these instructions. To follow a private site, someone must first be added as a viewer and then they will need to make sure the site is listed in their Reader > Manage.

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New Sites are Private by Default

To give you time to build your site before you officially launch it, we set new sites as Private by default. You don’t need to worry about your unfinished site being viewed before you’re ready.

Before you can launch your site, you will need to verify the email address you used to sign up for your account. If you did not receive the verification email in your inbox, make sure to check your spam and junk mail folders.

You can also resend the verification email, or change the email address on the account by going to My Site → Settings and scroll down on the General tab.

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