So I finally talked my wife into getting rid of Blogger and transferring to a WordPress blog. It took a bit of convincing though, since Blogger is so easy to use. What was the selling point? Any time she said, “I just wish Blogger did XYZ” I would come back with “Well there’s a plugin that will do that for WordPress.” The trick was that she wanted the blog to be private. She wanted only registered people to be able to see the content and she didn’t want them to see the ugly blue login form when loging into the blog.
Family blogs are unique. Often you want to share your life with your family and close friends, but only your family and friends. I did some research when setting up a blog for my wife that I’m sure some others out there will benefit from. So after a week of searching, here is my list of plugins that will turn your WordPress blog into a fully private family-friendly blog.
Members Only
Overview: Blocks non-logged in access to your blog
Members Only is a great plugin if you really want to keep your blog private. If a non-logged in user tries to access your blog they will be redirected to either the login page, where they could register if you’ve enabled it, or to a page of your choice. A great feature of this plugin is that it will redirect your visitors back to the page they were trying to access once they log in. This plugin works great when used with either the Custom Login or Themed Login plugins (read below).
Custom Login
Overview: Replace the default blue login/register graphics or your blog
Binary Moon’s Custom Login plugin is an easy way to replace the default blue WordPress-themed login graphic. This is a great tool to give your login screen some personality and give your visitors some constancy between logging in and viewing your blog’s content.
Themed Login
Overview: Customize your login screen to match your blogs theme
The Themed Login plugin lets you fully integrate your login and registration forms into your existing themes. You tell the plugin where you header, sidebar, and footer theme files are, along with any other code it may need to display correctly, and then it integrates the forms for you. It will take some tweaking to get the settings right, but it looks seamless when it does. I ended up hacking my wife’s wp-login file to achieve this same effect because I seem to recall it not working correctly with another plugin we were using.
Force User Field Registration
Overview: Make users enter their name when registering
Force User Field Registration is a plugin that lets you know who is registering for your blog. It places mandatory “First Name” and “Last Name” fields into the registration form. The original form only required a username and email address. Now you can be sure that you actually know who’s signing up for your blog.
WP User Moderation
Overview: Approve user registrations before they become active
This is a must have plugin for those who want true privacy on their blogs. Typically, when a user registers WordPress sends them a random password on the spot, which they can then use to login. This plugin stops that email from being sent until you approve them. Thus they can’t login into your blog and see all your articles until you’ve given them the ok.
WP Password Register
Overview: Let your reader choose their own passwords
This plugin lets people registering for your blog choose their own password, rather then having to login and change the random one that WordPress sends them. This is nice if you want easy, convenient registering and logging in for your viewers. It can also add a CAPTCHA-esque security image to the login page for extra protection against SPAM registrations. Note: this plugin can’t be used with the above User Moderation plugin, as it does almost exactly the opposite.
Email Users
Overview: Email your readers when you update the blog or just anytime
Email Users lets you send out emails to registered members of your blog. You can send out a pre-made template that you’ve set up when you update your blog or just send out emails anytime. Unfortunately, you have to manually send out the email after each post, but it does make it easy for you. Automation would have been a great feature!
Flexible Upload
Overview: Easy photo uploading to your blog
Now that you are blogging about your family you are going to need to show off some pictures. Flexible Upload lets you upload your images easily while you are writing your post. Images can be resized and thumbnailed right on the spot. It’s extremely easy to use and makes blogging with images very simple.
Conclusion
So there you have it, a few plugins I found that came in useful while setting up my family’s WordPress blog. These plugins add some security and functionality that is needed when blogging about personal information that is intended for family and friends. I’m sure there are tons more out there. If you have a favorite plugin or two that would help someone with their family blog, post it in the comments!
Hi there John! I agree that a family blog is different as the focus is on selectively sharing your content. Great tips you have on here for WP users. I just wanted to share a more “out of the box” solution. I.PH Blogs has built in privacy controls that can be set on a per post level. That lets users decide precisely who gets to see what on their blogs. Best part, users can grant access even to people who don’t have I.PH accounts. It also has a built in photo and audio gallery with the same level of privacy control. Email notification is also a standard feature. I.PH Blogs is powered by WP and is a quick, easy and free way to set up a family blog.
Thanks for the good reads here John. I’m sure to be back. Blog on!
Peter Juan’s last blog post..I AM APOCALYPSE!!!
Very useful page. Great information for me. Thanks.
@estetik Glad you found some use for it!
excellent info cool idea.
thanks
ankara nakliyat’s last blog post..Ankara Evden Eve Nakliyat
Thanks. Very useful post.
Hello John
nice article, but i could not help read the comment posted by Peter Juan posted on the 10th of march ref I.PH blog, I tried to find the link for this as it seems to have many features pre-installed. I don’t suppose you can throw any light on this application, i believe its part of the WP family.
Regards David Epos Retail
@Epos Great question. Prior to his comment I actually hadn’t head of I.ph before. I looked into it briefly and it looks like its a blog system running a version of WordPress MU (the same thing that runs WordPress.com). According to their site they give you “yourname.i.ph” as a domain with emails at the same. It looks like a Blogger-esque WYSIWYG interface with improved privacy settings. Other then that I couldn’t tell you more. I’ve been meaning to set up a test account and blog about my experience. Stay tuned for it in the next several days.
Is there a way to make your blog private but still allow Feedburner to access the RSS feed?
@DW Not that I’ve seen. But if the RSS feed isn’t secured then the blog isn’t truly private is it?
Hi,
I am the author of a plugin you mention here. Email Users has been updated and moved to its own page. Please update the link to:
http://email-users.vincentprat.info
Regards,
Vincent Prat
Vincent Prat’s last blog post..Email Users 3.0.0 released (for WordPress 2.5)
@Vincent Thanks for the update, got it fixed.
John, what about the new uption in Wordpress 2.5 where you’re able to make posts private and password protected? I haven’t tried it out but it might be a simple “no plugin” way to solve the privacy in a family blog?
Mikael’s last blog post..Best Pet Insurance
@Mikael That may work depending on your needs. My problem with it is you have a common password for posts. The plugins I’ve listed lets your readers have their own password which is more secure and easier for them to remember.
WordPress is getting a lot of exposure in the blogging world! Seems everyone’s making the switch. I’ll have to look into this a lot more!
I run a blog for my finance and I. We wanted to share our pictures and life with our families but came across the problem of keeping it accessible to only the people we wanted to see it. I used WordPress for that. I use the following plugins for this:
FeedBurner Plugin: I use this one to hide the rss feed. Anybody who knows WP could figure out the wordpress feed. This makes it a feed burner feed and you can point this feed to any feed you want.
Private WP This makes you login to see anything.
As for making the login page pretty this was difficult because I had to hard code a lot of the color codes in and change colors in the dashboard. I would love for WP to actually integrated private blog with themed login pages for this.
Thanks for the post I think I am going to use the some of the other plugins you suggested. At the moment I have to register members.
@Elizabeth: Thanks for sharing! I ended up hard coding the login page for my wife as well, which is a pain when upgrading. Maybe I should make my next project be to write a plugin that’s an all-in-one private blog solution. Hmm, could be interesting! Thanks for stopping by!
Thanks for the tips, make want to make a new family blog with the plugin you recommended on your post =)
This is a goldmine! My dad asked me, as the resident expert in WordPress, to make a family blog. He had a hundred different requirements in mind, most of them already in WordPress, but your list of plugins just made my life a whole lot easier. Thanks so much!
Thanks so much, this was super helpful!
Hello John
nice article, but i could not help read the comment posted by Peter Juan posted on the 10th of march ref I.PH blog, I tried to find the link for this as it seems to have many features pre-installed. I don’t suppose you can throw any light on this application, i believe its part of the WP family.
What about tag pages? I’m finding that alot of my traffic is coming from tag pages. I didn’t see any settings for true/false with regard to tag pages. Thx.
Thank you for this extremely helpful post.
I have one additional plugin to suggest - Peter’s Login Redirect - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/peters-login-redirect/
Useful if you want those other subscribed family members to be taken directly to the website rather than the WP dashboard.
Good article. Thanks.
The black background is very, very hard on your guest. But again, the article must have been good because it is the only “black” page I’ve read all the way through.
On a different point, did you do anything to keep the blog from being spidered?
Joe