Private vs. Public posts and pages

  • One feature that I would love to see when composing or managing a post or page is whether to give it public (not logged in) or private (logged in) status. Setting a page or post to “public” would appear as normal, but “private” would never show up in the list or in a search — i.e. anyone not registered would never know it even existed.

    For the moment, I have set my WP install not to show pages, I link them manually through my site. However, they would show up in a search. Anything I’ve wanted to keep private I’ve had to move off the blog to a hard-coded page.

    Put simply: There are some things I want available to me, or those who I allow to register, but not to the rest of the world. ??

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 18 total)

  • Ummm. Posts already have this, look for Post Status in the Advanced Editing mode (under the main entry text block): draft, public, and private.

    Pages don’t expose such a capability as yet, though in theory they should be able to.

    -d

    Thread Starter Nicki Faulk

    (@nitallica)

    “Posts already have this, look for Post Status in the Advanced Editing mode (under the main entry text block): draft, public, and private.

    Weird. When I composed a test post and marked as Private it didn’t hide it until I went back under Manage and edited it. (I verified this by viewing my blog from another machine on my LAN)

    While I’m a little worried that I had to post it first then hide it, I’m glad it works. It would be awesome to have this feature for pages!

    This worked as advertised for me in v1.5. I’ve just upgraded to 1.5.1 and all my ‘private’ posts are now visible…whether or not I go back to Manage>Edit them!!

    Help! Has anyone else found this to be the case, and if so, was there a fix?

    Cheers!

    If you are logged in, you should see your private posts. If you are not logged in, you shouldn’t see them.

    You are right, Ryan. But that’s not the way it worked before the upgrade. (Same thing for a Hide/Cut plug I use). Whereas before I could (as admin) view the site as non-admin would, it seems I can only do that now by logging in as a user *without* admin privileges.

    Perhaps there’s a greater logic to having it work like that (or a consequence of some of the coding tweaks that went into the upgrade).

    But I’ll have to get used to this (albeit slight) inconvenience.

    Cheers!

    Private posts behaved like this once upon a time and then get broken. Now they are fixed depending on your definition of fixed. ??

    This is a little related, I decided to create a post as a user with level 1 and set it to private. When I then logged in as the admin, level 10, i could not see this post. Is this the way it’s designed? If so is there a way to change this? I would like to know all the post that are on my system.

    Another thing was i installed the Post_level plugin. Perhaps this might be interfering with this meaning I cannot see the post?

    I’m having a problem with private posts showing up in my RSS feed. I set up a system where I link two related posts together, one showing up in the main column and the other as a side box on the right. I tag the sidebar post as private, close it to comments and pings and save it. Then I use a modified version of “get-a-post” (I changed the WHERE clause in the SQL) which allows showing private posts. You can check this here.

    Of course I don’t want the “private” sidebar posts to appear in the RSS, they are not intended to be viewed individually.

    I just upgraded to 1.5.1.1 and this still happens. Any ideas?

    I having the exact same problem. Private posts are now showing to everyone!

    What a nightmare! Fix please!

    Martin, they aren’t (or shouldn’t) showing to ‘everyone’. Log in as a different user and your private posts should disappear. There does, however, seem to be an issue about what an *admin* sees after the upgrade to 1.5.1.x, but so far I haven’t heard of a private post being seen by the public.

    I was happy with the earlier WP-performance where private posts were private – even to the admin – when viewed from the blog front, but could be found in the admin>Manage panel with “-Private” tagged on to the title. After all, they were private. I didn’t need to see them in the blog-front.

    But now private posts *are* in the blog front (for an admin) *without* the “-Private” added to the title, which means its much more ambiguous as to which are private and public posts until you go back into the admin panel.

    I would like to agree but considering the number of quirks that upgrading WordPress seems to throw up, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Private posts _were_ made Public.

    I logged out and still they were viewable.

    Rolled back to an older version (1.5). Will await next major update before trying again.

    I was happy with the earlier WP-performance where private posts were private – even to the admin – when viewed from the blog front, but could be found in the admin>Manage panel with “-Private” tagged on to the title. After all, they were private. I didn’t need to see them in the blog-front.

    (source)

    That’s the way WP is working for me. If it’s private, even when I’m logged in I don’t see them on the front. My private post is in a special category, too. When I type in the path to view archives of that category, I get a 404. When I go to the control panel and “Manage” posts, I see the private post there. Is this strange behavior? That’s the way my install is working! (version 1.5, by the way)

    tsguitar,
    That’s the way we wish it were *still* working with 1.5.1 and 1.5.1.1! It’s a good reason to stick with 1.5 until something gets resolved.

    martinc,
    you might be right! I haven’t investigated thoroughly yet (I’m still building), but I too have a growing suspicion that private posts are now public. I’ve partially addressed the issue with the ‘Category Visibility’ plug, which I needed anyway. But the apparent ‘breaking’ of basic private vs. public functionality in the default install is a fairly major, and unfortunate, development that I hope gets addressed in a future update.

    Cheers!

    “…stuck with 1.5 until someone can sort the mess out…”

    Sorry, but I have a stack of private notes to myself that should not be world-viewable.

    xmiinc, thanks for the vote of confidence but I’m quite appalled but such a flimsy bug going unnoticed by the WP dev team…

    I’m running 2 separate installs, 1.5 and 1.5.1, and I had this same problem (private posts not displaying when logged in) and found that when I went back to edit the entry and then selected to “publish” it, instead of just saving it, that fixed my problem.

    I haven’t had any problems with the private entries showing to the public, fortunately.

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 18 total)
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