Bengfort.com

Blogs are great for sharing information with the entire world, expressing your opinion, or being published with ease. We use our blog slightly differently, however- our biggest use is to keep up with the family and have a space for Bengforts on the web. This means that there are times when we have stories to share with each other that we don’t necessarily want to be in the public domain. We have tried using email to communicate in the past, but this limits the discussion- replies might miss people or not be time synchronized. Wouldn’t it be great to have a blog type forum with comments that was private?

Well, with WordPress, you can in fact do this! Publishing posts as private means that you must be logged into the site to see the post and that the post has been published. In order to publish a private post- go to the “Add New” post screen in the site admin. Next to the text editor is a Publish widget (which contains the Publish button)- in this widget is the Visibility attribute of the post. Note, it probably says Public, which is the default. Click the Edit link, and simply change the post to Private!

There is also a password protected option.  When you select this option you can add a password to the post, which is required to view the post, whether you are logged in or not. Anyone you give the password to can view the post (even non-registered users), and everyone can view that the post exists becasue they will be able to see the title. This option is great if you don’t want to make the post completely private, but allow more than just registered users to have access- however, you will have to email the password to everyone you want to read the post!

I’m hoping that with the use of private posts, you will feel more comfortable sharing information on our blog with the family. Some things to keep in mind: When adding a private post, make sure you tweet that you put the post up, or we will not know! Also, when you come to the site log on, or make sure you always remain logged on so you can see any private posts that are put up.

If you have any questions, I would be happy to answer them!