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Free Plugin by David Gewirtz v4.2.1

My Private Site

Make your WordPress site private in one click, block registration spam, and clean up existing spam accounts with staged safeguards that protect online …

My Private Site

The facts

Rating
4.5★ from 81
Active installs
10k+
Price
Free
Last updated
26 Jul 2026
Added
Jun 2012
Requires WP
5.8
Tested up to
WP 7.0.4
Requires PHP
5.4
Downloads
617,075

Our analysis

AI-assisted

My Private Site is a WordPress plugin that makes your site accessible only to logged-in users. It allows you to restrict access to all posts and pages, redirect visitors to the login screen, and maintain privacy without the complexity of membership systems.

This plugin is suitable for family sites, schools, clubs, and development environments where you want to share content with a trusted audience. It includes features like registration spam protection and tools for managing suspicious user accounts, making it a practical choice for those needing strong privacy controls.

Best for: This plugin suits anyone needing to create a private online space for a trusted audience.

What it does well

  • Makes entire site private with a single setting
  • Includes built-in registration spam protection
  • Allows user self-registration when enabled
  • Provides tools for managing spam accounts
  • Simple setup using standard WordPress settings

Where it falls short

  • Limited information on specific features or user experiences

Verdict

My Private Site offers a straightforward solution for those looking to ensure privacy on their WordPress site. It provides essential features for managing access without unnecessary complexity.

From the developer

David Gewirtz's own description of My Private Site, lightly tidied.

My Private Site makes your WordPress site private so only logged-in users can see your content. With one click, you can restrict access to all posts and pages, automatically redirect visitors to the login screen, and keep your site visible only to people you trust.

Unlike full membership or subscription systems, My Private Site focuses on strong privacy without unnecessary complexity. It is ideal for family sites, schools, clubs, client previews, or development environments where you want to share content with a trusted audience without managing payments, profiles, or custom roles.

Ideal Use Cases

  • Family sites and school projects: Share personal updates, photos, or assignments only with family members, classmates, or teachers you choose.
  • Development and staging sites: Safely show work-in-progress to clients or teammates without exposing unfinished content or letting it be indexed by search engines.
  • Clubs, groups, and internal blogs: Create a private online space for members or staff without the overhead of a complex membership system.

Digital Fortress protection

My Private Site helps protect the “front door” of your private site with built-in safeguards for login and user registration, including registration spam protection and optional reCAPTCHA support. If spam accounts already exist, the Spam Account Cleanup tool helps preview, export, and batch-delete suspicious basic user accounts with protections for online store customers and confirmations. It also includes AI Crawler Defense to discourage automated collection of your site’s content.

Key Features

  • Make your entire WordPress site private with a single setting
  • Redirect logged-out visitors automatically to the login page
  • Choose where users land after login (requested page, home, dashboard, or custom URL)
  • Support user self-registration on private sites when enabled
  • Protect registration with built-in spam controls and optional reCAPTCHA
  • Safely preview, export, and batch-delete spam subscriber accounts with the Spam Account Cleanup tool, while protecting detected EDD and WooCommerce customers
  • Optionally block unauthenticated access to the WordPress REST API
  • Simple, no-code setup using standard WordPress settings
  • Privacy shortcode lets you selectively show or hide content within a page or post.

Built-in Registration Spam Guard

Fake registrations can quickly fill your user list and trigger a flood of notification emails. My Private Site includes Registration Spam Guard controls that help block automated signups before they become user accounts:
* Registration reCAPTCHA: Adds an optional reCAPTCHA challenge to the WordPress registration form and rejects unsolved or unverifiable submissions.
* Honeypot field: Adds an invisible registration field that normal visitors do not fill in, but many bots do.
* Gibberish username detection: Blocks long, randomly mixed usernames often generated by registration bots.
* Reserved administrator usernames: Blocks self-registrations that impersonate common site identities such as admin or webmaster.
* URL-like username detection: Blocks usernames that look like domains or URLs, including phishing-style hosted page addresses.
* Crypto scam phrase detection: Blocks usernames that carry common bait phrases such as balance checks, transfer notices, or withdrawal prompts.
* Excessive email dots: Blocks email addresses with unusually dotted local parts commonly used in bulk fake accounts.
* Suspicious Gmail plus aliases: Blocks Gmail plus-address aliases with random-looking tracking codes often seen in automated spam bursts.
* Digit-dominant and gibberish email checks: Optional default-off checks for mostly numeric or random-looking email local parts.
* Missing MX records: Blocks registrations when the email domain is not configured to receive mail.
* Disposable email domains: Blocks common throwaway email services, including matching subdomains.
* StopForumSpam lookup: Checks registrants against the StopForumSpam database.

Each Registration Spam Guard option can be enabled separately, and registration reCAPTCHA can be enabled independently from login reCAPTCHA while sharing the same keys. When enabled, reCAPTCHA protects the standard WordPress registration form, and selected spam checks also block suspicious unauthenticated account-creation attempts from other public entry points, such as REST API, XML-RPC, admin-ajax, and custom registration forms. Blocked attempts are logged in the Spam Log area for quick review.

Spam Account Cleanup

If a site has already been hit by fake subscriber accounts, My Private Site includes a staged Spam Account Cleanup tool in Advanced settings. It previews basic users, applies hard protections for detected EDD and WooCommerce customers, store-order accounts, content authors, site managers, recently active users, and uploaded mailing lists, exports the exact dry-run queue to CSV, and only deletes after a backup acknowledgment and typed confirmation. Deletion runs in resumable browser-driven batches, reassigns any unexpectedly found WordPress content to the current admin instead of deleting it, and includes an optional orphaned usermeta sweep for metadata rows that no longer belong to any user.

Built-in AI Crawler Defense

The internet is rapidly changing, with AI crawlers and bots harvesting content without consent. My Private Site helps you defend your work with integrated AI Crawler Defense features:
* NoAI and NoImageAI tags: Automatically add meta tags and headers that signal compliant AI systems not to use your text or images for training.
* Block GPTBot: Add a robots.txt rule to prevent OpenAI’s crawler from accessing your site.
* Really Simple Licensing (RSL): Publish a machine-readable license that explicitly prohibits AI training on your content.

These protections are included free in the core plugin, easy to enable with a checkbox, and designed to safeguard your site without affecting normal visitors or search engines. You can use them even if you’re not using any other site privacy features.

Read the full description on the official page →

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