Is This Possible? blog Private to Unregistered…

[lisa_clev]

Hi there,

I’m just wondering if this is at all possible…

I have a WordPress blog running 2.5. I’m new to all of this, be gentle ?? I’m wondering if it is at all possible to set my blog up so that unregistered people viewing my blog cannot see my posts, but people that are registered can. I also want to ensure that these people that registered can only register if approved by me also. i.e. they register and I approve or deny after, similar to the comments approval. Is that possible?

I have it set up to how I like it but I have a problem with some select people and them trying to make my life hell (stalking), and my blog is my diary so therefore I don’t really want to put my life in there until I know it’s private.

Thank you for reading and taking the time to comment. I appreciate it.

Lisa

[rosiembanks]

I’m going to tell you this as a mom: anything online can be broken into.

Putting your life into a plugin-protected WordPress blog may be better than, say, putting your life into a MySpace page, but ANYTHING online can be hacked. Don’t forget that. Always protect yourself.

That said, look at this and this. Both are plugins that should

[lisa_clev]

Thank you Rosie. You rock! ?? That plugin is perfect and is set up now. Thank you again. I realise it’s hackable but I don’t think my follower is techie enough to figure that one.

Since you seem to be great on directing me to plugins and I’m googling a different one. Could you point me in the direction where I would be able to see my users (subscribers) IP address(es)? I have a few subscribers already. All that I know but just want to be cautious.

Thank you again.

Lisa

[rosiembanks]

You won’t take my motherly warning, eh? Ah, well.

Make sure you remove the update services option in Dashboard –> Settings –> Writing. Just scroll down to the bottom and erase that pingomatic thingybopper and hit “save changes”.

And go to Dashboard –> Settings –> Privacy and make sure you’ve toggled the “I would like to block search engines, but allow normal visitors.”

Regarding stats: I use Statcounter’s basic program that tracks your last 100 users, but I see they’ve got a WordPress plugin now. I haven’t tried it yet, though.

And remember to keep ALL your software updated — that means your plugin software as well as your WordPress software.

[lisa_clev]

Thank you Rosie. I have added that plug-in.

Although, it really isn’t what I was looking for. I just assume what I want is just an option at the moment with WordPress.

I was hoping that you could go into the ‘users’ section in the WordPress dashboard and where it shows a list of users you would be able to see the users IP addresses. For example, when you get a comment on your blog and it emails you, it tells you the IP address of the computer the user was using when they made that comment. I was hoping you could see the IP addresses from dashboard without added user tracking.

Another example is forums and forum software. With forum software you can actually look at the members and which threads they are viewing in real time. Which means IP address. I would like something similar to that for WordPress although an option for looking at what the member is viewing in real-time is overkill, just an IP address would be fine for me lol.

Thank you ever so much.
Lisa

[StrangeAttractor]

If you are truly concerned about some people seeing your private diary, you might also consider just setting up a separate site and putting a password login over the whole site (a function of your hosting admin panel, not WordPress). And set the blog to “private” so that it is not indexed by Google.

You can always still be hacked, as RosieMBanks points out — you should always avoid putting truly private info anywhere on the web — but securing a private site under a password and setting up your robots.txt file to turn away bots will be strong measures towards keeping a private site out of the public eye.

[rosiembanks]

Okay, well there is one plugin that records absolutely everything, spammers included, and may be overkill for what you need. But I think it’s an important plugin anyway because (in case your site gets hacked or exploited) it provides you with all the necessary details to determine what happened.

Whooami wrote it, and you can find it here: Postlogger for WordPress.

The logged info does not go into your Dashboard, however. It’s loaded into a text file at the root of your site. You download the file and go through it.

Actually, the more I think about it, the more I think it would be very useful to you, because (presumably) you are password-protected, it wouldn’t fill up with spammer info as fast as it does for other sites. And it would show the IPs of those who got through to your password-protected site.