Privacy/Visibility issue

  • About a month ago, I’ve momentarily switched my site from publicly visible to privately visible. Meaning only I (the site owner) would be allowed to view the site by entering my username and password. Now that I’m trying to turn my privacy settings off, meaning I want to make my site visible, I’m having a challenge.

    I’ve watched several tutorials and have read the privacy forum and it says to click on ‘settings’, ‘readings’, under visibility settings ‘make site visible/allow search engines to index your site’.

    When attempting to follow the process, it does not allow me to make my site visible. Under my ‘search engine visibility’ section, it only shows 1 option, ‘Discourage search engines from indexing this site’.

    I sincerely need help and any help would be GREATLY appreciated. Thank you!

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)

  • About a month ago, I’ve momentarily switched my site from publicly visible to privately visible

    Can you please describe the method used to do this.

    Thread Starter aaramini93

    (@aaramini93)

    Sure, I logged onto my wordpress dashboard, clicked on the ‘settings’ tab on the left hand column, clicked ‘reading’, scrolled down to ‘search engine visibility’, and clicked ‘do not allow site to index on search engines’. I followed such steps after watching a youtube video explaining how to make my blog private.

    That check box only allows or does not allow the virtual file ‘robots.txt’ to be available and is not at all related to private blogs.

    Thread Starter aaramini93

    (@aaramini93)

    I reviewed the section regarding ‘robots.txt’ and it’s under the ‘robots meta configuration’. Not sure if that’s what you were referring to. I recall seeing three options under ‘search engine visibility’ whereas now I only see one option. The option that states, ‘Discourage search engines from indexing this site’.

    If you were to go about making your blog private and then reversing it, what would you do?

    I would use allow/deny in .htaccess.

    Thread Starter aaramini93

    (@aaramini93)

    How can I go about doing that?

    You just need to know your IP and follow this example:

    order deny,allow
deny from all
allow from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

    This is added to very top of .htaccess (FTP or host File Management Tool access required)

    Above assumes your host env. is Apache/Linux.

    Note, if your ip changes or you are not at that ip, you will not have access (but could edit above).

    Note, by doing so, you will also drop SEO (as any search engines will not be able to crawl site)

    Thread Starter aaramini93

    (@aaramini93)

    It worked! ?? Thank you so much. Have a happy holidays and a wonderful New Years!

    Glad to help. Please mark this issue resolved if so.

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
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