Privacy

Privacy
Privacy is an important aspect of establishing your domain for a few reasons. One, it allows you, the site owner, to control who has access to your work. In terms of privacy, there are two basic technical approaches to controlling who sees your work. Directory specific privacy settings that allow you password protect a specific directories and application specific privacy settings that enable you to control who can access a specific application. For example, if you have a series of files in a directory on your server called "readings" you can password protect that directory from your server control panel. Alternatively, if you have an application installed, such as WordPress, MediaWiki, etc., you would manage the privacy settings using specific guidelines for controlling that application.

Protecting Directories on Your Server
To password protect directories on your server you need to go to the "Websites & Domains" tab in Plesk and look for the "Show Advanced Operations" link at the bottom of the page and click on it.



Click on the "Password-protected Directories" icon.



From there you can click the "manage" link associated with the directory you want to password protect.



Or you can create a new password-protected directory, in this example the directory http://test.murderinc.biz/test will be protected..





Finally, you need to add a username and password to the directory to control access



Protecting Specific Applications
This will be a resource we will be building out over time, but to get you started ehre are the specifics for controlling priavacy and access on your WordPress site.

Managing Privacy for WordPress

 * Search Engine Visibility (New as of Version 3.5.0): Note: the Settings → Privacy screen has been removed from WordPress as of Version 3.5.0 and can now be found under Settings → Reading.

The out-of-the-box privacy settings for WordPress give you two options: enable search engines to crawl your site or discourage search engines from indexing this site. When you check discourage search engines from indexing your site you are basically unlisitng your web address. Keep in mind this does not mean your site can not be found or that all search engines engines will honor your request (hence the "discourage").

If you would like more granular control over privacy settings for your site we recommend installing the More Privacy Options plugin for WordPress. This plugin adds additional levels of privacy that enable you to require users to be a member of the site to view its contents.

Nota Bene
The owners of a UMW Domains account do not have to worry about their contact information being shared because after the initial sign-up, that information will not be published or used in any way without the consent of the participants. While participating in this pilot you domain will not appear on the WHOIS database under your name, but rather under a generic UMW account in order to prevent your information from being shared in what amounts to an phone book that anyone has access to.