WordPress offers its own option for protected blog entries, but that requires entering in a password for each individual entry that you write. Passwords are fine, except that you’ll have to remember a lot of passwords, or use the same password for every protected entry you write. But if you want to prevent individuals from accessing those entries, you’ll need to edit those posts one by one and change their passwords.
The better solution by far is to set it up so that certain blog entries are protected by permissions. By setting permissions, you’ll be able to keep a group of blog entries protected and determine exactly who has access to them, and remove access from certain individuals if the need should arise. And I’m able to do exactly that, using three WordPress plugins: Advanced Category Excluder, Role Manager and ViewLevel 2.0.
Advanced Category Excluder, which I have already written about, allows you to exclude certain categories from certain aspects of your website.
Role Manager allows you to set up roles for specific users. I use the plugin to define and group “approved” users, which are users whose registrations I have manually bumped up to the “approved” status. I also use the plugin to give the “approved” group an user level of 3, which works in conjunction with ViewLevel 2.0.
ViewLevel 2.0 filters posts based on their user level. Basically, any post that is designated as requiring a user level of 0 or above will be hidden from the view unregistered users — your normal Joe Schmoe visitor.
Putting it Together
Here’s how to use these three plugins in order to create protected blog entries on your blog. If used correctly, these three plugins will allow you to create blog posts that are viewable only by a group of registered users that you have manually approved.
Advanced Category Excluder: use this plugin to prevent your designated category for protected blog entries (I named my category “Protected”) from showing up in archives, searches and feeds.
Role Manager: set up a role named “Approved”. Set the user level to 3.
ViewLevel 2.0: add vl=3 to any posts that you wish to protect.
Also: make sure to select your “Protected” category for protected blog entries!
Hello, and welcome to Blogging Girl! Blogging Girl is a blog about blogs, and everything related to the maintaining of them. My name is Jenn. You may know me from my personal blog, 
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