How to Unpublish a WordPress Site

Over half of the entire population now uses the Internet on a regular basis.

Most of us are now accustomed to finding information about things that interest us online.

That’s why there are millions and millions of websites out there. Hell, people even make big money using sites like Mturk doing small tasks.

Wouldn’t you know it, a lot of these websites are hosted on WordPress.

Each month, website managers publish over 70 million new posts on WordPress. Today, we’re going to discuss something completely opposite. 

In today’s post, we’ll teach you how to unpublish a WordPress site.

What’s more, we’re going to explain how to unpublish and remove single posts, how to hide pages from certain visitors, and how to put password protection on some posts.

For those who want to take the stress out of managing their WordPress site, hiring managed WordPress services could be the answer. This will ensure you receive all of the latest upgrades and updates and will be better protected against security threats and malware too!

Without further ado, let’s get right into it.

How To Unpublish a WordPress Post

Before learning how to unpublish an entire website, you should learn how to unpublish single posts from your website. This will come in handy if you ever publish something:

  • Too early and derail your publishing schedule.
  • A post that didn’t go through the editorial process.
  • That’s either outdated or unsuited for your website.

If you find yourself in a situation where you want to take off a post from your website, you can do it in 6 easy steps.

In order to remove a post, you need to do the following:

Step 1: From your dashboard, go to the Pages or Posts section

Step 2: Click on the post you want to remove

Step 3: Find the Publish box on the right side of the screen

Step 4: Next to Status you should find the option to Edit

Step 5: Find the Draft option and click on it 

Step 6: Click on the Update button to save a post as a Draft

Once you save it to drafts, your post will become invisible to all of your visitors. However, if you still want to allow a certain group of people to see the post, you can set it on Private or put  password protection in place. 

How to Limit WordPress Post Visibility 

To remove a post for random website visitors while allowing people with a direct URL to see, you need to download and install a plugin first.

WP Hide Post allows you to seemingly remove pages, while keeping them on your blog.

Once you install the plugin and launch it, WP Hide Post will give you a box that controls where individual posts are displayed on your website. You can hide posts from:

  • The front page
  • Category pages
  • Tag pages
  • Author pages

Your website probably has a search bar. To ensure that the page you want to have removed doesn’t show up during a search, you should use the WP Hide Post plugin.

Also, you can always have pages show back normally on your website whenever you decide to. 

How to Hide WordPress Posts From Logged Out Visitors

Even though establishing a paywall is still a relatively new practice, if you already have an established reader base, you have an opportunity to make a lot of money.

Many publications managed to cash out on their loyal readership.

The first step to building a paywall is limiting access to certain pieces of content.

You don’t need to have a New York Times budget to build your own paywall. As a matter of fact, you can do it easily using nothing but your free WordPress software. 

You just need to turn the pages on private. Then, you need to mark certain website members to allow them to see it.

All of the other visitors will see a “404 Error” when they try to enter the page using the URL. 

To make a certain page private, you need to:

Go to the menu and find the page

  • Click on the Edit link in the corner
  • Go to Visibility and check the Private box
  • Click on the update button to make the page private

This will prevent random website visitors from accessing exclusive content on your website and allow you to create paywall-based money earning system. 

How to Password Protect WordPress Posts

That’s not the only way to make your WordPress posts private. Another way you can do it is to put password protection on it.

You don’t even need to download any plugins for this. The WordPress platform has its own feature that allows users to put password protection on posts.

Here’s what you need to do to put password protection on a post:

  • In the post editor, select the post you want to protect with a password
  • Find the Status and Visibility section in the sidebar on the right
  • Click on the Visibility status and a new menu will pop up
  • In the menu, find the Password Protected option and select it
  • Select a password, type it in the box, and re-type to confirm
  • Once that is done, simply click on the Update button and you’re done

This another good way to keep exclusive content away from certain users. However, you should be aware that this way of locking out users is far less safe than the previous one.

That’s because your password could leak, which would comprise your exclusive content. 

How to Unpublish an Entire WordPress Website

Finally, if you want to remove your entire website with all of its contents from the Internet, you can also do that.

You can do this to prevent anyone from seeing your old business/hobby or if you want to repurpose old content for a new website.

This will prevent Google from indexing it. 

Whatever your reason may be, here’s how to unpublish a WordPress website… 

What to do if You’re Hosted on WordPress.com

For people who have their websites hosted on wordpress.com, here what they need to do. First, log in to My Sites and click on the website you want to remove.

From there, go to the Manage section and pick Settings. In Settings, go to Privacy and choose one of the following options:

  • Public – Makes your website public for all users
  • Coming Soon – Shows a single page generated by WordPress
  • Private – Keeps your website and all of its content locked away from the public

Pick the last option and all of the content will be locked and kept private. 

What to do If You Have a Self-Hosted WordPress Website

On the other hand, if you have a self-hosted WordPress website, you don’t have the same options.

Owners of self-hosted websites need to get a special plugin in order to scrap their content from the Internet. 

First, go and download Coming Soon Page, Under Construction & Maintenance plugin. Once you install it and activate it, click on it and enter Settings. There, in the General section, you will find these 3 options:

  • Disabled – Keeps the plugin disabled and leaves your website as it is
  • Coming Soon Mode – Displays a Coming Soon page instead of your homepage
  • Maintenance Mode – Displays a Maintenance page instead of your homepage

The Maintenance page is customizable. You can put your branding or edit the message you want to have displayed. 

Take Your WordPress Website Down Whenever You Want

Taking a WordPress website off the Internet is not actually that hard. You just need to know what exactly you want.

Do you want to remove a page of your website?

Perhaps you want to lock some pages on your website? Or do you want to have your entire website taken down?

Once you know what exactly you want, all you need to do is follow the instructions we laid out above.

Removing a website is the perfect solution if you want to remove any traces of an old business venture and prevent search engines from indexing it.