WordPress is really cool, especially as a content management system. What many users don’t know is that we can password protect individual posts. This can easily be done by going to your WYSIWYG editor within your WordPress admin panel and selecting a password in the right hand sidebar.
As you can see from the screen shot below it is to the right of the empty editor. It is directly to the bottom right of the screen shot.
<—Look here
You might wonder what this is good for. For starters it would be ideal for a WordPress based membership site. Admittedly there are better ways to set up a membership site than with WordPress, but it works for some and is a cost effective way opposed to spending hundreds of dollars on related software.
Gobala wrote an interesting post about creating a WordPress membership site not so long ago. Like he mentioned, it can get quite messy with code and all if we try to get too technical.
But what stops us from offering an ebook, report or similar right from our blog to those who pay a small fee to see the password protected post?
To me this is an interesting thought and one that I might feel inclined to try in the future. I realize that this never will and can replace any serious membership content management. But it might just as well be enough for some bloggers who like to keep things simple.
Certainly worth a thought or two, what do you think?
Have you use password protected posts in the past and if yes, what for?
Tell us about your experience with this method so others can get the benefits.
Thank you
Monika
Technorati Tags: wordpress , password protected posts , passowrd protect your wordpress posts , blogging
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Monika,
I have just set up a blog/site and have had nothing but problems trying to get it to be membership site. I will update only one page on the blog each week for paid subscribers and your solution might actually work. I guess I would have to get them the password each week in an email (very unreliable) though.
Any suggestions on your end would be appreciated.
Thank you,
Abi Carmen
abicarmen1@yahoo.com
P.S. Globala, I am a member/purchaser of the easywordpress package. Good stuff.
Monika -
I’ve searched for an answer for way too long now, maybe you can help me…I’m using WP 2.3.3 for a group who wants “members only” posts and we’re using password protected posts for that.
Question…any idea of how to target the actual “Protected” post with css? I’m trying to make the protected posts appear slightly different than the regular non-password-protected posts so that a member will see at a glance that they are reading members-only material.
I could target the category to style the post, but that doesn’t work when the single page is requested. Any ideas?
TIA!
LizzyFin