Daniel Westermann-Clark

The HTTP Authentication plugin allows you to use existing means of authenticating people to WordPress. This includes Apache’s basic HTTP authentication module, <a href="http://shibboleth.internet2.edu/" rel="nofollow ugc">Shibboleth</a>, and many others.
To follow updates to this plugin, visit:
https://danieltwc.com/
For help with this version, visit:
https://danieltwc.com/2011/http-authentication-4-0/

HTTP Authentication

Use an external authentication source in WordPress.

Syed Balkhi

Jared Atchison

Slava Abakumov

Chris Kelley

Nathan Singh

LionSher Technologies

WordPress is one of the most popular platforms for building corporate intranets and private company websites. The problem is that WordPress was designed for public-facing sites. Making it work as a private intranet typically requires installing multiple plugins, configuring each one separately, and hoping they all play nicely together.
All-In-One Intranet solves this by giving you everything you need in a single plugin to turn your WordPress site into a fully private intranet. Enable privacy with one checkbox, set up auto-logout to protect sensitive information, configure where users land after login, and manage multisite access controls – all from one settings page.
Whether you are building a corporate intranet, a private knowledge base, a restricted client portal, or an internal communications hub, this plugin handles the foundational privacy and access control so you can focus on your content.
<h4>What is an Intranet?</h4>
An intranet is a private website or network used internally by an organization. Unlike a public website, an intranet is only accessible to authorized users – typically employees, contractors, or specific team members.
Common uses for a WordPress intranet include:
<ul>
<li>Internal company communications and announcements</li>
<li>Employee handbooks, policies, and procedures</li>
<li>Knowledge bases and documentation wikis</li>
<li>Project collaboration and team coordination</li>
<li>HR portals for onboarding and training materials</li>
<li>Client portals with restricted access to project files</li>
</ul>
WordPress is well suited for all of these because of its familiar editing interface, extensive plugin ecosystem, and flexible user role system. All-In-One Intranet provides the access control layer that makes it all work.
<h4>Features</h4>
All-In-One Intranet includes five core features designed to cover the most common intranet requirements:
<h4>One-Click Private Site</h4>
Enable the “Force site to be entirely private” checkbox, and your entire WordPress site becomes restricted to logged-in users only. Anyone who is not logged in gets redirected to the WordPress login page automatically.
This single setting handles multiple layers of privacy at once:
<ul>
<li>Page and post access – all frontend content requires authentication</li>
<li>REST API protection – unauthenticated REST API requests are blocked with a 401 error, preventing data leaks through the API</li>
<li>XML-RPC blocking – XML-RPC is disabled entirely when privacy is active, closing another potential access vector</li>
<li>Search engine blocking – the robots.txt file is automatically updated to disallow all crawling, keeping your private content out of search indexes</li>
<li>Pingback suppression – outgoing pingbacks and trackbacks are disabled so your private site does not announce itself to external services</li>
</ul>
The plugin also monitors your WordPress registration settings. If “Anyone can register” is enabled on a single site, or if open registration is allowed on a multisite network, the plugin displays a warning on the settings page so you can fix it before it becomes a problem.
<h4>Auto-Logout for Inactive Users</h4>
Shared workstations and forgotten browser tabs are a real security risk for intranets. The auto-logout feature lets you set a maximum idle time – in minutes, hours, or days – after which users are automatically logged out.
The plugin tracks each user’s last activity timestamp. On every page load, it checks whether the configured idle time has been exceeded. If a user has been inactive for too long, they are logged out immediately and redirected back to the page they were viewing, which triggers the login wall if the site is private.
This protects sensitive company information without requiring users to remember to log out manually. Set it to 30 minutes for high-security environments, a few hours for typical office use, or leave it blank to disable the feature entirely.
<h4>Custom Login Redirect</h4>
By default, WordPress sends users to the dashboard after they log in. For an intranet, this is not useful – your team is logging in to read content, not to manage the site.
The login redirect feature lets you set any URL on your site as the post-login landing page. Point it to your company homepage, a news feed, or a team dashboard so users see relevant content right away.
This redirect only applies when users log in directly through the standard WordPress login page. If a user tries to access a specific page and gets redirected to log in first, they will be sent back to that page after authentication – not to the custom redirect URL. This keeps the user experience smooth.
<h4>Multisite Sub-site Privacy</h4>
If you run a WordPress multisite network, you can require logged-in users to be members of a specific sub-site before they can view it. This is useful for organizations with multiple departments, teams, or client areas – each with their own sub-site that should only be visible to relevant people.
When a user who is logged in but not a member of the current sub-site tries to access it, they see a message listing all the sub-sites they do have access to, with clickable links to navigate there. Access to the Network Admin area is never restricted by this setting.
This option works in combination with the main privacy setting. Enable private site first, then enable sub-site membership requirements for granular access control across your network.
<h4>Multisite Default Role Assignment</h4>
Managing user access across multiple sub-sites in a WordPress network can be tedious. Every time you add a new user or create a new sub-site, you would need to manually assign roles across all the relevant sites.
The default role assignment feature automates this. Choose a role (Subscriber, Editor, Administrator, or any custom role), and the plugin handles the rest:
<ul>
<li>When a new user is created, they are automatically added to every active sub-site in the network with the selected role</li>
<li>When a new sub-site is created, all existing users are automatically added to it with the selected role</li>
</ul>
This saves significant administration time, especially for growing organizations where new employees and new sites are added regularly.
<h4>How to Make Your WordPress Site Private</h4>
Setting up a private WordPress site with All-In-One Intranet takes about one minute:
<ol>
<li>Install and activate the plugin from the WordPress plugin directory</li>
<li>Go to Settings > All-In-One Intranet in your WordPress admin (or Network Admin > Settings > All-In-One Intranet for multisite)</li>
<li>Check the box labeled “Force site to be entirely private”</li>
<li>Click Save Changes</li>
</ol>
That is all it takes. Your site is now private. Any visitor who is not logged in will be redirected to the WordPress login page. The REST API, XML-RPC, and search engine indexing are all locked down automatically.
If you see a warning about registration settings after enabling privacy, follow the link in the warning to disable open registration and close the gap.
<h4>How to Set Up Auto-Logout for Inactive Users</h4>
The auto-logout feature protects your intranet from unattended browser sessions:
<ol>
<li>Go to Settings > All-In-One Intranet</li>
<li>Find the Auto Logout section</li>
<li>Enter a number in the time field (e.g., 30)</li>
<li>Select the time unit from the dropdown: Minutes, Hours, or Days</li>
<li>Click Save Changes</li>
</ol>
Users who are inactive for longer than the configured period will be logged out on their next page interaction. Their activity timer resets on every page load, so active users are never interrupted.
To disable auto-logout, clear the time field and save.
<h4>How to Configure Login Redirect</h4>
To send users to a specific page after they log in:
<ol>
<li>Go to Settings > All-In-One Intranet</li>
<li>Find the Login Redirect section</li>
<li>Enter the full URL of your desired landing page (e.g., <code>https://example.com/welcome</code>)</li>
<li>Click Save Changes</li>
</ol>
Users who log in via <code>/wp-login.php</code> will now land on that page instead of the WordPress dashboard. Users who were redirected to the login page from a specific URL will still return to that URL after logging in.
<h4>How to Set Up a WordPress Multisite Intranet</h4>
For organizations running a WordPress multisite network:
<ol>
<li>Go to Network Admin > Settings > All-In-One Intranet</li>
<li>Enable “Force site to be entirely private” to restrict the entire network to logged-in users</li>
<li>Optionally enable “Require logged-in users to be members of a sub-site to view it” for per-site access control</li>
<li>Under Sub-site Membership, select a default role to automatically assign users to sub-sites</li>
<li>Click Save Changes</li>
</ol>
The privacy and membership settings apply network-wide. The default role assignment runs automatically when new users or new sub-sites are created. Existing sub-sites and users are not affected retroactively when you change the role setting.
<h4>Security Features</h4>
All-In-One Intranet takes a layered approach to access control:
<ul>
<li>Authentication enforcement – uses WordPress’s built-in <code>auth_redirect()</code> function for reliable login redirection</li>
<li>REST API lockdown – blocks unauthenticated API requests, preventing data access through endpoints like <code>/wp-json/wp/v2/posts</code></li>
<li>XML-RPC disabling – completely disables XML-RPC when privacy is active</li>
<li>No-role user handling – on single-site installations, users who are logged in but have no assigned role are logged out and shown an error message, preventing access by deactivated accounts</li>
<li>Registration monitoring – displays admin warnings if WordPress is configured to allow open registration, which would undermine your private site setup</li>
<li>Nonce verification – all settings forms use WordPress nonce validation to prevent cross-site request forgery</li>
<li>Capability checks – settings pages require <code>manage_options</code> (single site) or <code>manage_network_options</code> (multisite) capabilities</li>
</ul>
Note that media uploads (images, PDFs, etc.) remain accessible to anyone who knows their direct URL. This is a limitation of how WordPress stores media files and is common to most privacy plugins. If you need to protect individual file downloads, consider a dedicated file protection plugin alongside All-In-One Intranet.
<h4>For Developers</h4>
All-In-One Intranet provides the <code>aioi_allow_public_access</code> filter for developers who need to make specific pages or endpoints accessible without authentication.
This filter runs during both the template redirect check and the REST API dispatch check. Return <code>true</code> to allow public access for the current request:
<pre><code>add_filter( 'aioi_allow_public_access', function( $allow ) {
 // Allow public access to a specific page
 if ( is_page( 'public-landing' ) ) {
 return true;
 }
 return $allow;
} );
</code></pre>
This is useful for exposing specific landing pages, webhook endpoints, or custom API routes while keeping the rest of the site private.
<h4>Google Workspace Integration</h4>
If your organization uses Google Workspace (formerly Google Apps), two companion plugins extend your intranet:
<ul>
<li>
<a href="https://wp-glogin.com/glogin/?utm_source=wprepo&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=AllInOneIntranet" rel="nofollow ugc">Google Apps Login</a> – lets employees sign in to WordPress using their Google Workspace accounts. Domain admins can manage WordPress access entirely from the Google Admin Console, and only authorized employees can access the intranet.
</li>
<li>
<a href="https://wp-glogin.com/drive/?utm_source=wprepo&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=AllInOneIntranet" rel="nofollow ugc">Google Drive Embedder</a> – allows authors to embed Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and other Drive files directly into pages and posts. Useful for intranets where documentation lives in Google Drive.
</li>
</ul>
Visit <a href="https://wp-glogin.com/?utm_source=wprepo&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=AllInOneIntranet" rel="nofollow ugc">wp-glogin.com</a> for more information about these and other plugins.

Intranet & Private Site – All-In-One Intranet

Private intranet in one click. Auto-logout for security, login redirect, and multisite privacy controls included.

HTTP Authentication vs Intranet & Private Site – All-In-One Intranet