How to Restrict WordPress Site Access by IP or Logged In Users
You are about to launch a new product, and you have developed a great website for it using the world’s favorite web publishing platform, WordPress. You want to test it live on its own domain and hosting, but you are not yet ready to make it public just yet. Earlier in another article we talked about how to password protect WordPress without user registration. How about limiting access to a site for visitors who are logged in or allowed by IP addresses? In this article we will show you how to restrict WordPress site access by IP or logged in users.
Video Tutorial
If you don’t like the video or need more instructions, then continue reading.
First thing you need to do is install and activate Restricted Site Access plugin. After activating the plugin, go to Settings » Reading. Scroll down to the bottom and you will see options to configure restricted access.
Using Restricted Site Access plugin, you can restrict access to a WordPress site for logged in users only or for people with specific IP addresses. You can also choose to redirect users with no access to the site by sending them to the login page, redirect to another web address, show them a custom message, or even redirect them to a specific page (coming soon page) that you have created on the same site. Restrict by IP feature is very useful if you want multiple employees in the office to have access to the development project without requiring them to register as a user.
This plugin can be extremely useful for beta testing your site before a product launch. It is also good for creating private blogs for friends and family only. We hope that this article helps you run your projects discretely. Do you have other ways that you have used to restrict WordPress site access? Share it with us in the comments below.
