shooshee

I’ve locked down a good chunk of the archives on a post-by-post basis while I do some structural and organizational changes around here. It’s a clunky way to do it, but the fastest way to do it for now. If you really feel the need to read any of those protected archive posts - just ask and I’ll give you the password(s).

So I’ve started really investigating ways to restrict access that are both easy on me and easy on those I want to grant access to. In case any of you want to do something similar - like maybe separate access to public and private or work and life posts, here are some of the things I’ve found so far that I will be taking a deeper look at. (yes, I realize I’ve ended a couple few sentences with prepositions so far in this post, and frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.)

Most of these WP plugins came from a really comprehensive list of restriction plugins on wordpress.org and a few were also recommended to me via email (thank you).

Angusman’s Authenticated WordPress Plugin - “Allows you to make your content accessible only to registered and logged in users.”

Category Access - “Restrict (protect) categories on a user-by-user basis. Useful for restricting Categories seen when writing a post.”

Category Visibility - “Adds a new admin menu for setting category visibility settings for the front page, searches, feeds and archives.”

Demo Mode - “Puts your blog into a demo or maintenance mode except for authenticated users.”

Disclose-Secret - “Only shows WordPress content to other users if they meet certain access criteria.” Note: the documentation has been translated into English, but some of the translation is a little rough.

Page Restriction - “Lets you hide specific pages from unregistered users.”

Post Levels - “The Post-Levels plugin allows you to set a numeric “level” to each of your users, and then author posts that are only visible by users above that level.”

Role Scoper - “Control reading and editing access by defining role requirements and assignments by page, post or category. Can assign roles by user, WP Role group or custom-defined group. Ridiculous feature set threatens to crush author but is very actively maintained and forum-supported. For WP 2.2 to 2.6.”

Simply Exclude - “Provides an interface to selectively exclude/include categories, tags and page from the 4 actions used by WordPress. isfront, isarchive, issearch, isfeed.”

WP-Members - “By default, WordPress allows all content to be “open” and viewable by anyone and allows the site owner to restrict specific content if desired by setting a password for the post. WP-Members operates with the reverse assumption. It restricts all content by default and allows the site owner to “unblock” content as desired.”

WP-Password - “The other day I got asked if there was a way to password protect a WP blog where the author didn’t have access to .htaccess, didn’t want to create users, send/remind them of their passwords, or manage post security levels. “I just wanna password protect the damn thing. Is that so hard?” Well, at the time, yes. It was. But not anymore!”

And last, but not least, I also found a discussion on client login ideas that may also address some of the same concerns.

I hope this helps you all. If you have any suggestions, feedback, etc. Feel free to comment - but know that as always, your comments will be moderated.

It’s not feeling very secure around here any more. I know that there are people reading that I don’t really want to let into my life any more, particularly people who have cut me out of their lives. I feel like any vulnerability I reveal could be used against me. And yes, that may seem a tad paranoid - but that’s how I feel.

But it’s more than that. And less that that. The truth of the matter is I don’t feel the want or need to share all of my life with just anyone and everyone.

I want and need to be more protective of what’s going on with me, as well as adjust some of the signal to noise ratio in my life.

So yeah, there’s a little bit of a “fuck you” to this.

But what is “this” and what does “this” mean? I will soon be password protecting the whole shebang here or at least all of the personal bits. I plan to do it in a way that should not be a pain in the ass (or will be a minimal pain the ass) for those of you that want to read (and that I want reading). I don’t plan to mass email/spam people. I’ll share the login info in some way that only people I trust will get it. If you KNOW me, you know how to get in touch with me and you can ask me for this info. Chances are very very high that if you ask I will give it to you because I seriously doubt that the people I no longer trust would have the balls to ask. And if they do ask, I will have the balls to say No.

This isn’t meant to be dramatic - melo or otherwise. Some of you have made choices and because of those choices you just don’t get to have this anymore.

How long it will take to do this - I don’t know. I need to do some thinking and some planning so that I can make this a place where I feel safe to share what I want with those I trust.

one way, originally uploaded by sheeshoo.

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