My Private Site

My Private Site is a WordPress plugin to secure your site so that only logged in members can see content on the site.

The plugin can be found here. Install the plug in and then look for My Private Site on the Dashboard sidebar.

Set The Site to Private

Once in, click the Site Privacy tab. You will then see a screen that looks like this:

Check the Next to Site Privacy, check the Enable login privacy option. Then click the Save Privacy Status button.

Your site is now secure. Now, when you go to the URL for the site, you will be redirected to the site Login Page.

Set The Landing Page

Next, you’ll want to set a landing page that the user will be redirected to after successfully logging in.

Select an option for Landing Page After Login. Return to Same URL brings you back to the URL you were on before you logged in. Redirect to Site Home automatically brings you to the Home Screen. Redirect to Specified URL brings you to whatever URL you specify.

If you choose Redirect to Specified URL, you enter the URL in the Specified Destination URL.

I use the Redirect to Site Home option here.

Create a Static Home Page as a Landing Page

Make sure to set the Site Home to a static page. To do this, Create a new page called Home. You can have conditional text on the page which appears only if the user is logged in or is logged out. You use shortcodes provided by the My Private Site plugin. The syntax for these two shortcodes are:

[privacy hide-if="logged-in"]This will be hidden if the user is logged in.[/privacy]
[privacy hide-if="logged-out"]This will be hidden if the user is logged out.[/privacy]

You can add a login link right on the home page for the logged out condition.

Home Page

On the Home Page tab, check Site Home which allows the site home page to remain accessible without requiring login.