How To Password Protect Your Post In A WordPress Blog

Posted on June 23rd, 2009 in Password Protect A Post, WordPress

“Why in the world would I want to password protect a post in a wordpress blog?” could possibly be the question speeding through your head right now… The only reason I’ve ever password protected a post is for membership purposes. There may be a ton of other reasons and I’m sure you can think of a few yourself. If it’s dirty or porn related keep your ideas to yourself LOL!!!

A Basic Breakdown of Why & How I Would Password Protect A Post

Let’s say I’m going to run a mini-coaching series that teaches people the basics of how to create a business model for their own online products or services. The first thing I would do is

run it through some sort of telephone recording service. There are free services as well as paid for services.
save the telephone recordings to my computer and upload them to my blog. It can be one recording per post or all of the recordings on one post. Whichever you prefer you can password protect them so only the people who paid for the series can gain access.

Another great reason for doing this is the wordpress blog platform allows your clients to listen to the recording right from your blog so they don’t have to eat up storage on their computer in order to play it on one of their media players.

They simple visit your blog
click on the name of the post they want to access
use the username and password that was provided to them by you whether it’s through an email autoresponder (which I HIGHLY recommend) personal email, snail mail or a phone call
read whatever content you’ve placed on that post as well as watch any videos or listen to any audios and then non-paying public will not have access to the material

Use Password Protected Posts In Your Email Marketing

That’s Right! But before we dive into the “post” part let me explain what I mean… The reason why it’s a great tool to use with the list of buyers you’ve built is you can randomly change the password to any protected page or post. Let the client know in the very first autoresponder email they receive that for the security of the material they’ve paid for they need to check every email you send the because the password can be changed without warning and the only way they can get access to the new one is through a real time broadcast email set to the directly from you. Pretty good huh?! LOL! Let’s get started my young Ninjas!

Login into your blog or a blog you’re a guest on
In the upper left hand corner of your dashboard you’ll see a tab that says “Posts”
After you’ve clicked “Add New” you’ll be taken to the screen where you’ll add the content you want to password protect. Now I must point out!!! If you place your content on a “Page“ instead of a “Post” it will show up as a tab with the page headline displayed within it like the image below.
The reason why it says “Client Portfolio” is I placed that in the headline section when creating the blog page. If I would have called the page, “Check Out My Killer Client Testimonials I Think You’ll Think They Rock! that would a pretty big tab don’t ya think? Let’s get back on track now because we’re talking about protecting posts not pages but the same exact steps are taken to protect them both.
After you’ve added all of the content you want on that particular it’s time to protect it before publishing it. Look to the upper right of your screen and you’ll see a section called “Visibility” and a clickable link to the right of it called “Edit“. Check out the image below for further reference.
Once you click “Edit” the box will expand and you’ll see three options. Yo want to click the “Password Protected” option and the screen will expand again where you can enter the desired password for that particular page. Now if you’re the type of person who simply hates choosing passwords and tends to sit in front of the computer screen with a blank look on your face for over 20 minutes and still can’t make up your mind, here are some suggestions… (1)RootinTootin (2)MallBunny (3)Fudgalicious (4)PickleWeasle (5)WhoDoggy (6)Whatchamacallit.
Once you enter your desired password don’t forget to click “OK” and for precautionary measures I’d save the draft as well, which is in the same box you were just working but in the upper left hand corner.

Here’s a little tip for ya… Be sure to ALWAYS save your post as drafts first, then preview the post and see what it’ll look like to the public. If you’re satisfied with what you see only THEN should you publish the post so people who have the password can access the new material.

So You’ve Chosen To Pull All The Material In One Post…

Updating the post with new information and changing the password isn’t a difficult process at all. Just be sure the view you’re working in is “Visual “. If see a bunch of code along with your text that means you’re in html view .

The way you change views is by moving your mouse to the upper right hand side of the box in which you’re creating your post. Make sure the “Visual” tab is a darker color then than the html tab and you’re all set.

Once you’ve added/removed you’re new content, remember to save as draft and view it first before you publish it live to the Internet, simply move your mouse to the box in which you set the post password and click the “update” button.

If you have any questions feel free to ask them in the form of a comment and I’ll be notified via email. Then I’ll trot my happy ass over to the computer and answer them the best I can… cool? (hey! if you have any friends or relatives you’re allowed to tell them about this blog…)

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