Overview
Middlebury hosts two WordPress Multisite platforms, SITES dot MIIS (Institute) and SITES dot Middlebury(College). Additionally, MiddCreate
You have control over what you make on SITES dot or MiddCreate. It can only be made public with your permission or by your own choice. You have full agency to control the level of privacy you want to set for your website or individual piece of content. If you’re creating something for a class assignment, you will may have to find a way to allow your professor to access it for grading purposes. However, an instructor cannot force you to use identifying personal information or share your content without your consent.
Site-level privacy for SITES dot
You can set the privacy level for your whole site under Settings>Reading using the Site Visibility section. There you have the five options listed below.
Option one, is just a regular website. It’s open to anyone who visits and search engines will index it enabling people to find it through normal search engines.
Option two, asks reputable search engines not to index your site. Anyone can visit the site but it’s unlikely anyone will find it accidentally.
Option three, restricts access to logged in members of the SITES dot community that your blog is a part of. Search engines will not be able to index your site. Users who aren’t logged in will be unable to visit the site.
Option four, requires any visitor to be logged in on SITES dot, and a member of your site.
Option five, requires any visitor to be logged in on SITES dot, a member of your site, and the user must be an administrator of the site.
Site-level privacy for MiddCreate
By default, your privacy choices will be found under Settings>Reading and the Search Engine Visibility section. You have one option “Discourage search engines from indexing this site.” That will dramatically lower the likelihood of your site being found via any reputable search engine but anyone with the link will be able to see your site.
More Options
You can install plugins to expand your site-wide privacy options. You can password protect your whole site using a plugin like Password Protected or get options for your multisite just like SITES dot using the More Privacy Options plugin.
Content-level privacy
Once you have written a post or page, you can choose its visibility under the Publish sidebar. By default, you have three visibility options:
- Public – The page will be visible to everyone.
- Password protected – The page is protected with a password you set. WordPress will prompt you for the password on your initial visit to a protected page, and only people who have the password can view a protected page.
- Private – Pages set as private are only visible to Editors and Administrators. Private pages are not visible in the Reader, feeds, or in any search. A page can be private without being password protected.
Need help?
For technical support for WordPress Privacy, search the ITS Knowledge Base or submit a help ticket here.
For pedagogical support for WordPress Privacy, schedule a consultation with a DLINQ team member.