Why do you want to learn how to unpublish WordPress sites?
Let me guess.
You want to redesign the sites completely. You mistakenly publish something and feel like taking it down.
Or you might need a break from blogging and consider unpublishing the entire site. What if you need to delete something completely from the site?
Well, whatever the case, there are ways to unpublish, delete, hide, and even password-protect pages in WordPress.
I will also show you how to make certain parts of your WordPress site private, so only people with login access to the admin area can work on the page or post.
Unpublish or Delete? Understanding The Difference
Before I dive deep into how to unpublish WordPress sites, let me quickly clear a few misconceptions.
Unpublishing and deleting a WordPress site, pages, or posts is different.
When you unpublish a post or page on a WordPress site, such action does not remove the content and its URLs from the web altogether. The website may still be accessible to certain user roles, such as admins and editors.
What you’re doing here is simply blocking public access to the live URLs.
However, deleting a WordPress blog removes the complete database from the hosting server.
This process is irreversible; it can not be undone. Any damage, content, pages, or posts you deleted in this process can not be retrieved.
The website will become inaccessible to site admins and the public. All content and pages/posts published on the site will be permanently removed from the hosting server.
The only way to view content published on such sites is through third-party websites that archive web content, such as the Wayback Machine.
Why am I telling you this?
Beginner WordPress users may not be aware of the difference and inadvertently delete their blog instead of temporarily hiding it from the public.
Trust me, I made the same mistake a decade ago when I accidentally deleted my entire WordPress blog instead of temporarily taking it down for a redesign.
Back to the main topic of this post, which is how to unpublish your WordPress site.
4 Ways to Unpublish a WordPress Site
In the traditional sense, WordPress does not provide a clear direction or step-by-step guide to unpublish your WordPress blog.
In fact, going by the literal meaning of the word “unpublish,” you can not unpublish a complete WordPress blog. You can only unpublish posts and pages in a WordPress blog, not the entire database.
However, there are ways to hide your entire WordPress website from visitors so it is inaccessible to users and search engine crawlers.
In this post, I show you different ways you can hide or make your WordPress site inaccessible to users until you’re ready to go live with it.
Also, I will walk you through ways you can easily unpublish posts and pages in WordPress.
1. Set up the Coming Soon Page
The most effective way to unpublish or hide your WordPress blog from public view is to set up a “coming soon” or “maintenance mode” page.
This page enables you to work on your blog’s back end without revealing ongoing progress to the public. During maintenance mode, visitors to your blog will see a customized landing page.
The good news is that you don’t need to create this page yourself; a few WordPress plugins automatically enable the page.
One of the most popular maintenance mode plugins is SeedProd. SeedProd is a powerful website and theme builder that allows you to build any website design effortlessly.
It comes with hundreds of preset templates, including coming soon pages, website themes, WooCommerce themes, landing pages, etc.
To install the SeedProd plugin, log in to your WordPress site and navigate to the side menu. Hover on “Plugin” from the side menu and click “Add New Plugin.”
On the next page, type SeedProd into the search box.
Install and activate the plugin from the page, then click “Setting.” On the settings page, enable the “Coming Soon Page Mode” or “Maintenance Mode” features.
The Coming Soon page mode does not hide your website from search engines unless you’ve set it to private or disabled search engine indexing in the WordPress settings page. More on this step later.
The Maintenance Mode option automatically notifies search engines that your web page isn’t available.
Your option depends on your specific needs for hiding your website from the public. To block access from users and search engines, use the Maintenance Mode option.
However, if you are only required to hide or unpublish the website while working in the backend, the Coming Soon Page is the ideal option.
People can still visit your website through various traffic channels, including social media, as well as direct and referral traffic, but they will only see a page with notices of what’s coming soon.
2. Discourage Search Engines from Indexing The Site
The discourage search engine option only works or is effective if you don’t want search engines like Google and Bing to index your site. However, I’m not sure why you’d want to do this for your entire site.
The option does not prevent users from visiting your site through other traffic sources, such as direct and referral traffic, email lists, and social media links. It only instructs search engine spiders not to add your website to their search index.
Nevertheless, if you wish to do so, follow these steps to prevent search engines from indexing your WordPress site.
Go to WordPress admin, hover over Settings, and click Reading from the options.
On the Reading page, check the box that reads “Discourage Search Engines From Indexing This Site.”
Note: Search engines might honor or ignore this setting. It’s up to search engine crawlers whether a page gets indexed.
3. Unpublish Posts/Pages in WordPress
Now, this is where you can unpublish your WordPress site.
Several options exist for Unpublishing WordPress pages and posts. You can move a page or post to draft and republish later.
This option is great if you want to work on the page or post later but temporarily remove it from public view. Users can no longer view the page on the front end, but it is still available on your website.
Let’s say you accidentally publish a draft post or publish under the wrong permalink structure and want to correct that; you can unpublish and republish the post at any time.
To do that, follow the steps described below.
Go to your WordPress admin dashboard and hover over Post from the menus. Click “All Posts” from the options.
On the “All Posts” screen, hover over the post you want to unpublish and click the edit option. This action reveals other options you can apply to the post. But the one you’re concerned with is the “Quick Edit” option.
Click the Quick Edit and Publish to reveal the dropdown menu. From the dropdown menu, select draft and click “Update.” It will revert the post to the draft folder.
Another option for unpublishing posts and pages is available through the WordPress editor screen. I prefer this option because it allows you to think it through before taking the step.
You will see this in a moment.
Now, instead of reverting a published post to a draft via the Quick Edit option, click the Edit option only. This action will open the post in the WordPress editor screen for editing.
On the WordPress editor screen within the Post setting tab panel, click Switch to Draft from the options.
Clicking the Switch to Draft option opens a popup box. If you’re sure you want to unpublish this post or page, click OK from the box.
Otherwise, click Cancel.
You must know that reverting a published post or page to drafts will cause broken links on your website. People visiting the URL from external sources will see a 404 Not Found error page if you don’t 301 redirect the deleted post/page to a live URL.
Therefore, you should redirect the draft posts/pages to a relevant live URL to preserve SEO and potential traffic.
If you don’t want to republish the post in the future or sooner, you can send it to the trash folder.
However, remember that WordPress posts and pages moved to the trash folder are automatically deleted after 30 days.
If you need to restore a post or page before this time, you can open the trash folder page and hover your mouse over the empty area of the post or page you want to restore.
It will reveal the setting under the corresponding post. Next, click the “Restore” option to revert the post to publish.
4. Password-Protected or Make Post/Pages Private
Another way to unpublish posts or pages in WordPress from the public is to set them password-protected or private.
This option is handy if you restrict certain sections of your website to coworkers, administrators, and clients, or grant access only to individuals with passwords.
Consider creating a client or paid subscribers area only in WordPress. This feature lets you do that successfully.
Although it does not unpublish the page or post from the website, it only grants access to people with a valid password or the appropriate access level, in the case of private content.
First, open the “All Posts” list screen and hover over the empty area of the post you want to make private or password-protected to reveal the editing options. Next, click “Quick Edit” from the list.
Within the options, you will see a space to enter your password or a checkbox to make the post private.
The password enables you to restrict the post to anyone with the password, while private restricts the post to only logged-in users with administrative or editor roles.
Remember to click the update button after making your selection.
From now on, WordPress will ask users on password-protected pages to enter a password before accessing the page.
You can also access the private and password-protected features from the WordPress editor screen when writing a new article. This is helpful if you’re writing a new post that has not been published before and want to make it private or password-protected.
In that case, ensure you’re on the Post tab from the side panel.
Click the “Public” button next to Visibility. Three options will appear: select ‘Private’ or ‘Password-Protected’ from the list.
Remember, the Password will restrict post visibility to people with the password, and ‘private’ restricts the post to only site admins and editors.
As a side note, if you need to remove a password or make a private page or post public, open the affected page and set the visibility status to ‘public’.
Conclusion…
As I said earlier, there is no built-in or native option to unpublish WordPress sites. However, you can unpublish, hide, delete, or even make private posts and pages on your site in several ways.
I hope you’ve found a suitable option for your specific case.
If you want to restrict access to your entire site from all users, the coming soon or maintenance mode option is excellent.
Everyone visiting your website’s homepage will see a customized landing page with notice information. This helps keep users informed about your website’s upcoming launch.
The maintenance mode informs search engines and users that the website is temporarily unavailable but will be available again soon.
However, if you need to protect pages and posts from people with passwords only, you can use the password-protected option. The Private option makes posts visible only to site admins and people with editor roles.
If you need help with these steps, leave your question in the comment box.
