How to Hide a Page in WordPress

WordPress is a great tool for building websites, but sometimes you might not want every single page on your site to be available to the public. You may be working on building new pages that aren’t ready yet, or you may have some information that should only be available to specific users. Luckily, WordPress has many default options for hiding posts and pages from the public, and plugins can extend these privacy settings even further. Below, we’ll walk you through a few different scenarios you might run into when trying to keep your content private.

You’re working on a page that’s not yet ready for the public

WordPress has tons of options for editing the content and design of your pages. It has so many, in fact, that it can be tricky to set everything up for a new post in a single sitting. Sometimes you want to save a page that you’re editing and come back to finish it later. This is where Draft mode comes in.

When you finish creating a new post or page in WordPress, the final step is to hit the Publish button. What you may not know is that if you’re not yet ready to take the page live, you can hit the Save as Draft button to save it for later. That way, you can come back and finish it when you have more time, without having to worry about your visitors finding your half-built page.

Already hit the Publish button by accident? No problem – you can set any published page or post back to draft mode by clicking Switch to Draft.

You only want certain users to see the page

Maybe your page is finished, but you don’t want it to be viewable by the public. You can change the Visibility setting to determine which users can see the page. There are three options for Visibility:

• Public: This page is available to the public and everyone can see it.
• Private: This page is only visible to logged-in administrators and editors.
• Password Protected: This page requires a password to view. Visitors don’t need to be logged-in to see it, so long as they know the password.

You want to create a members-only section of your website

The default WordPress options work well for individual pages, but they can be difficult to manage on a larger scale. Many people use WordPress to create members-only websites, with tons of content only available to registered users. This is where WordPress plugins can really take things to the next level.

There are lots of options for creating members-only WordPress sites. Different plugins have different strengths and weaknesses, so we encourage you to do some research and find the best plugin for you. Maybe you want to charge your members a monthly fee to access your content? Maybe you want to offer your membership for free, but you want different member classes that can access different parts of the site? The plugins we list below should give you a head start in finding the solution that’s right for you.

Our favorite membership WordPress plugins

• WP Members
• Paid Memberships Pro
• WooCommerce Subscriptions

Depending on what you’re trying to achieve, you may need to implement a custom solution. Even if an out-of-the-box solution will work for you, it never hurts to have an experienced developer help you set up your site and answer any questions. Watermelon Web Works has a lot of experience creating custom membership websites, and we’re ready to help you build the perfect site, too!