If you’ve been using WordPress for your classroom blog for a while, then you’re probably used to finding the privacy settings for your site by clicking “privacy” in the settings menu
This lets you decide whether you want your site to get listed by the search engines.
As of December 2012, the privacy settings have moved in the latest version of WordPress (3.5). They’re now called site visibility settings and you can find them in the Reading section of your classroom blog’s setting menu:
I guess this makes sense because WordPress now calls them “site visibility” options instead of privacy options. This is more accurate because when you run your own WordPress server for your classroom blog, the only two options you get are basically allow search engines to list you or ask search engines to ignore you.
If you’re a teacher running a classroom blog or a network of student blogs / websites, then privacy is a very real concern. Your privacy options are different depending on whether your website is on WordPress.com or your running your own WordPress server.
If your class site is on WordPress.com, then you have an additional (site visibility) privacy options: you can make your site private and visible only to your students. (WordPress.com used to limit you to 35 users on a private blog, but in Jan 2012, they removed the limit. This means that teachers can run a free, private classroom blog on WordPress.com with as many students as you wish. Of course, your students have to create their own free wordpress accounts.
If you run your own WordPress server, then you can install a free WordPress plugin called More Privacy Options which give you three additional privacy options:
- Make your blog visible to any community member. (In other words, anyone that has a user account on your WordPress server)
- Make your blog visible to only registered users on your blog. (So, only student users that you’ve added to your blog. This is the same as the WordPress.com option, “I would like my site to be private, visible only to users I choose.”)
- Make your blog visible only to administrators.
(By the way, as of Dec 2012, these privacy options now show up in the Reading Settings section of your WordPress blog)
