Jordan Hlebarov

<p>Frontend Gatekeeper hides the public frontend of your WordPress site unless visitors arrive with a configured URL parameter and value. It is useful for staging sites, soft launches, client previews, and pre-release content where you want to share a single shareable link instead of issuing individual user accounts.</p>
<p>Logged-in users always see the site normally, so editors and administrators are never blocked.</p>
<h4>Features</h4>
<ul>
<li>Hide the entire public frontend with a single toggle.</li>
<li>Configurable parameter name and secret value, set per site.</li>
<li>Custom blocked message shown to unauthorized visitors (served with a 404 status).</li>
<li>Same-site link propagation: WordPress-generated links, menus, and block content automatically carry the access parameter forward, so visitors stay authorized while browsing.</li>
<li>Footer-script fallback that adds the parameter to links and forms rendered outside normal WordPress filters.</li>
<li>Gutenberg and block-theme aware through the <code>render_block</code> filter and <code>WP_HTML_Tag_Processor</code> when available.</li>
<li>Multisite-aware URL scoping for subdomain and subdirectory networks: access on <code>/site-a/</code> will not leak the token to <code>/site-b/</code>.</li>
<li>Logged-in users, wp-admin, REST API, AJAX, cron, and <code>wp-login.php</code> are always allowed through.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Typical use cases</h4>
<ul>
<li>Sharing a staging or pre-launch site with clients and stakeholders.</li>
<li>Gating a soft launch behind a single link instead of provisioning accounts.</li>
<li>Hiding draft or campaign content until you are ready to publish.</li>
</ul>


Frontend Gatekeeper

Hide the public WordPress frontend behind a secret URL parameter. Anyone with the link gets in; everyone else sees a 404.

Brent Maxwell

<p>Quick plugin to enable the setting of a site private. Includes options for with multi-site capabilities. Includes functionality to show which sites are private on the blog list screen of the network dashboard.</p>
<h3>Use and Options</h3>
<p>The optiuon will be shown at the bottom of the “General” settings page.</p>


Private Sites

Quick plugin to enable the setting of a site private. Includes options for with multi-site capabilities.

Frontend Gatekeeper vs Private Sites