Restricted Site Access plugin

The Restricted Site Access plugin is used to limit access to your site to visitors who are logged in or accessing the site from a set of specified IP addresses. It’s a good solution for Extranets, publicly hosted Intranets or when you want to limit access to your site while it is under construction.

A logged in user is able to view the content on a site that has been set to a restricted IP range even if they aren’t logging in via that IP address and haven’t been added as a user to the site.

For sites that need all content, including media files, to be restricted to specific individuals it is better to use one of existing four private site options in Settings > Reading rather than activate the Restricted Site Access plugin. Refer to our Privacy support documentation for more information.

Restricted Site Access plugin is a CampusPress only plugin.

Configure Plugin

Once you have activated Restricted Site Access plugin in Plugins > All you configure it as follows:

1.  Go to Settings > Reading 

Reading Settings

2.  Select the checkbox next to “Restrict site access to visitors who are logged in or allowed by IP address”

Select Restrict site access

3.  Select how you want to Handle Restricted Visitors.

Restricted visitors are those that are viewing your site from an IP address that you haven’t listed in the Unrestricted IP address field.

Handle Restricted Visitors

4.  Add the Unrestricted IP addresses.

Add IP addresses

5.  Click Save Changes.

Media Privacy

In WordPress, site visibility settings control access to the site itself, but these settings do not extend to media files (such as documents) stored in the media library. Even if a site’s visibility is restricted, direct links to uploaded media may still be accessible. 

CampusPress includes an optional media protection feature called “Secure files upon upload”, found in Settings > Media. This feature enhances privacy by controlling who can access uploaded media files based on your site’s Site Visibility settings. 

Refer to Media Privacy: Secure Files Upon Upload for detailed instructions.

Note: If files need to remain strictly private, they should instead be stored on a secure platform such as Google Drive and linked from the site, so that access can be limited to the intended audience.