Making a WordPress web site disappear

It has come time to make the WordPress sites I made for my kids disappear off the public internet. They are getting old enough that their friends are finding their sites using google searches.

Here is what I did.

1. Password protect the entire WordPress site
2. allow a hole in the password protection to allow robots.txt to still be accessible.

If you password protect the whole site, then archived copies of the site will contine to show at the Internet Wayback Machine. So you still need the robots.txt to be accessible, but it should block all web archivers from indexing the site.

Sample robots.txt

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

This tells all web robots to go away, and indeed once this is active, the internet archive stops showing any of the snapshots that it has collected over the years.

I used SiteGround’s cpanel tool to password protect the whole tree containing the blog.

That resulted in the following Sample .htaccess contents

AuthType Basic
AuthName "EP"
AuthUserFile "/home/xxx/.htpasswds/public_html/elliot.pascoe.biz/passwd"
Require valid-user
<Files "robots.txt">
Allow from all
Satisfy any
</Files>

I added the Files paragraph to allow the robots.txt to be visible. cf;

user@shell: curl https://elliot.pascoe.biz/robots.txt
User-agent: *
Disallow: /

So far so good, the site will soon disappear out of Google and be only visible to those to whom I will share the password.

 

What is the best WordPress Blogging Client?

Here are some links to go with the talk I gave to the July 2016 WordPress Perth meetup that covered WordPress Blogging Clients.

Here is the PDF of the Talk – WordPressBloggingClients.pdf

1. Windows Live Writer

Officially supported as a WordPress.com authoring tool

• https://en.support.wordpress.com/xml-rpc/windows-live-writer/

Can still download and use on Windows 10 as part of Windows Essentials 2012

• http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/essentials

WLW Introduction

• http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-live/writer-basics

No longer being maintained.

2. Open Live Writer

http://openlivewriter.org/

• Fork of Windows Live Writer.
• Open sourced via the .NET foundation.
• Windows Only
• Actively developed, but slow updates.
• Check back in a few months.

3. WordPress.com Desktop (Calypso)

https://apps.wordpress.com/desktop/

Desktop application for Windows/OSX/Linux that runs very similar code to the wordpress.com `create a new post’ page and other wp-admin pages.

• Actively being developed, but still in beta.
• Uses the new WP REST API.
• Drafts are stored in your wordpress post drafts area
• Needs the Jetpack plugin to connect your blog to wordpress.com for authentication to work.
• Faster editing and more convenient that the wp-admin pages to create a new post.

4. Others

OneNote

https://www.onenote.com/

• Great cross platform support and syncing of text between platforms.
• OCR and Screen grabbing clients etc.

WordPress for Android/iOS.

https://wordpress.org/mobile/

• If you can stand typing on a glass screen or an external keyboard then WordPress’s clients for mobile and tablet are an option.
• Great for uploading photos from your phone for eg.
• Check to see how well they share drafts and upload media etc.

So Which is Best ?

Start by reading the power point …. and then you’ll realise that there are too many dimensions on any comparison matrix. Ask yourself what is your most important criteria?

• availability
• speed
• support
• features

For me speed is number 1 and cross platform / sharing drafts is next most important.

Windows Live Writer was FAST for editing, created clean HTML but never was cross platform.

WordPress.com Desktop is cross platform, but still kinda slow and a bit clunky, and it tends to butcher the HTML. It does centally store drafts which is a bit plus and enables great cross platform authoring.

So no “1” is best, try them all and see what you like most.