As a WordPress business owner, you should get as many views and impressions as possible for some types of content. It could be marketing campaigns, advertisements, social media posts, press releases, and so on.

However, some types of content require strong protection and control that you should allow certain authorized visitors to view. Take, for example, online courses, training materials, design specs, media files, research reports, price sheets, and confidential documents. 

So, how can you do that? 

In this article, we’ll walk you through 4 different ways to protect any type of WordPress content. 

Hold tight!

#1 Password Protect Content

Passwords have long been the most popular protection method for any confidential information. They provide the first line of defense against unauthorized access to your WordPress content. 

The stronger your password is, the stronger protection your content will have against unexpected visitors and content thieves. That’s why you should maintain powerful passwords for all premium content on your WordPress site.

Numerous password protection plugins available on the market nowadays enhance content security. So, it can consume a lot of time to find and pick the most suitable one for your site. 

After several research assignments and tests, we’ve found that the Password Protect WordPress Pro (PPWP Pro) plugin comes as a great option.

The WordPress plugin helps you password-protect your content, including posts, pages, custom post types, entire websites, or partial content. Simply put, people must enter the correct passwords to view the protected content on your WordPress site. 

Restricting access to your content has never been so simple with the assistance of PPWP Pro. It allows you to grant passwords to specific user roles and IP addresses to prevent users from sharing the passwords. Also, you can configure the password usage limits and expiration time to ensure maximum security for your content.

Another significant feature is that you can either set multiple passwords per post or use one password for multiple posts. 

#2 Prevent Content Access via URL

Besides password protection, another powerful way to protect your WordPress content is to block access to its URL. 

In other words, when someone clicks on your protected post or page’s link, the site won’t display the page content. Instead, another preset page will show up, for example, a 404 error page. Thus, unauthorized visitors won’t have a chance to see your content when attempting to access the page via its URL. 

The work seems difficult to do at first but it is actually a piece of cake. Simply install and activate the Protect WordPress Pages & Posts (PPP) plugin, it will help you handle the hassle. 

Once protected by PPP, your posts and pages are not accessible through their original links anymore. The plugin will generate new links, called “private links”. Your content is now exclusively available via these private links. Send your members these links to access your content. 

The coolest thing is that it lets you grant your private page access to certain user roles. You can allow only logged-in users or some particular roles such as subscribers and editors to approach your protected content. 

Besides, PPP supports you to set the private links’ expiration time, which stops people from sharing those links with others.

#3 Restrict File Access and Downloads

WordPress now supports plenty of file formats, namely PNG, PDF, MP3, MP4, DOC, and so on. Media files are the second most common content type in WordPress, just after the text. 

By default, visitors can easily view and download these files on your WordPress site. It will be a nightmare if you’re selling premium content such as online video courses and design templates. You probably don’t want people to share and download your valuable content for free.

To stop people from meddling your private files, consider employing the Prevent Direct Access Gold (PDA Gold) plugin. It was born to serve the sole purpose of protecting your WordPress files.

PDA’s working principle is straightforward. The plugin will redirect unwanted visitors to a 404 error page when trying to view and download your private files. 

Moreover, once protected, your files become completely unexposed from Google and other search engines. This eliminates the chance of someone discovering those important files on the search results.

What we love the most about PDA is that it allows you to grant file access authority to specific user roles. Take, for instance, your subscribers, logged-in users, or paid members. 

What if your users share the file links with others? Well, worry no more! You can set the link download limit and expiration time to prevent them from downloading and sharing your files.

#4 Watermark Files

Watermarks have long been a prominent solution to preserve content copyright and intellectual property. A watermark refers to an image or text that overlays documents. It’s often transparent to enable people to view the content and claim your ownership at the same time. 

Securing files with watermarks minimizes the chance of your digital assets being stolen and misused. Therefore, it’s essential to watermark your important documents.

However, WordPress doesn’t allow you to add watermarks to your files by default. That’s where the Watermark WordPress Files (WWF) plugin comes in handy.

WWF offers an easy-to-use tool to insert text-based and image-based watermarks into your files, including PDF, PNG, and JPEG. Plus, you can modify the watermarks to your liking and auto-apply them to your file uploads effortlessly. You can also watermark your eCommerce store product images with the help of the WooCommerce Watermark plugin.

Besides the watermark feature, WWF provides you with a remarkable PDF viewer to showcase PDFs beautifully on your site. Also, it helps you prevent users from downloading your PDF files by disabling right-click and download tools like IDM. 

In short, you can show your PDF content with watermarks while preventing the files from being downloaded. The plugin gives you almost everything you expect to secure your files. That’s why we highly recommend it as a top protection tool.

It’s Time to Win the Fight against Content Piracy!

We’ve demonstrated 4 powerful ways to protect all types of WordPress content: password-protect content, prevent content access via URL, restrict file access and downloads, and watermark files.

Now you can easily secure your posts, pages, custom post types, entire sites, partial content, and media files.

There’s no problem if you can protect your content by coding yourself. But in case you’ve just started with WordPress without any coding knowledge, our 4 mentioned methods would be a useful assistant. 

You can combine 2 or more different ways to ensure the strongest protective shield on your site. 

Let’s nip content thieves in the bud!