How to Unpublish a WordPress Site and Individual Pages or Posts

As a user of WordPress, there will come a time when you may need to hide your WordPress website, specific pages, or posts temporarily or permanently. Therefore, learning how to unpublish a WordPress website is vital for site owners.

This article will guide you through the detailed process of how to unpublish a WordPress site. It will cover various methods to hide the entire site and different ways to temporarily remove WordPress pages or posts. Plus, you will get tips to minimize the SEO impact of unpublishing your self-hosted WordPress website.

Unpublishing the Entire Website in WordPress

Whether your goal is to remove your WordPress website permanently or temporarily, there are various ways you can achieve this.

Unpublishing a WordPress Site through Permanent Deletion

With hosting services like The Elite Web Co., you can swiftly remove your Managed WordPress site from your hosting account dashboard.

Note: It’s highly recommended that you create a WordPress backup before proceeding with the deletion steps. By doing so, you can maintain a copy of your website content. Also, it will enable you to restore the website back online if you wish and guarantee a smooth WordPress reinstallation and migration process.

Here’s how to unpublish a WordPress site permanently from your Elite hosting account:

1. Log into your account and navigate to the Managed WordPress menu.
2. Press manage on the site you wish to delete.
3. Click on settings
4. Under the actions tab, click remove my site
5. Follow the secure steps that appear to delete your website.

By completing these steps, the entire site won’t be accessible anymore.

Unpublishing a WordPress Site Temporarily using Maintenance Mode

Activating the maintenance mode allows you to unpublish a WordPress site temporarily. It’s beneficial when you are applying major changes to your website and want to prevent visitors from seeing it. This tutorial will guide you through the process of temporarily unpublishing a WordPress site using the SeedProd plugin:

1. On your WordPress dashboard, navigate to Plugins, then Add New Plugin.
2. Search for the SeedProd plugin. Click install now and then activate.

3. When the setup wizard appears, choose exit setup.
4. Navigate to SeedProd, then Setup and select Setup a Maintenance page.
5. Choose one of their page templates and customize it to your requirements. Press save when you’re finished.
6. Return to the dashboard and navigate to Landing pages in the SeedProd section.
7. Toggle the inactive buton beneath the maintenance mode area. Once it flips, your entire website will be unavailable to visitors.

Unpublishing WordPress Pages or Posts

Knowing how to unpublish individual pages or posts in WordPress is beneficial when you’re revising content, conducting site maintenance, or safeguarding information during a transition.

In this section, we’ll illustrate four effective methods to unpublish specific pages or posts.

Method 1: Switch to Draft

You can temporarily unpublish a single WordPress page or post by changing its status to Draft.

1. Navigate to the page you want to hide on the Pages section. Or to the posts section if you want to remove a post. Press Edit.
2. On the right hand side, in the block editor, press the switch to draft button on the side panel.
3. When a confirmation box comes up, press OK and your page or post will be no longer visible.

Method 2: Use Bulk Actions for Multiple Pages or Posts

If you wish to hide multiple WordPress pages or posts swiftly, use the bulk actions feature:

1. Once again, head to either posts or pages from the WordPress dashboard and find the pages or posts you want to remove.
2. Next to the posts or pages you want to remove, check the boxes.
3. At the top of the page, press bulk action and the select edit. Hit the apply button next to it.
4. Under status, select draft.
5. Press update and your pages or posts will become drafts.

Method 3: Use the Private Mode

You can use the Private mode to unpublish a WordPress page or post.

1. Head to pages or posts from the WordPress dashboard and press edit on the page or post you want to turn private.
2. In the visibility section, select private.
3. When a confirmation box comes up, press OK and your page or post will become private.

Your page should now be accessible to only admins logged into the website.

Method 4: Use Password Protection

Password protection prevents the public from viewing the post or page and minimizes internal security risks among your website’s collaborators or logged-in users.

1. Head to pages or posts from the WordPress dashboard and press edit on the page or post you want to make password-protected.
2. In the visibility section, select password protected.
3. Choose a password and enter it into the Use a Secure Password box.
4. Press update to save your changes.

Tips for Unpublishing Your WordPress Content

After exploring how to unpublish pages, posts, and an entire WordPress site, we’ll share with you several tips for navigating the process efficiently with minimal impact on your site’s SEO.

Consider Archiving Instead of Unpublishing

Archiving pages or posts allows you to keep them out of public view while still maintaining internal linking integrity and other SEO efforts. This is because archived pages can still be accessed via direct links if needed.

Meanwhile, if you unpublish your WordPress site, all the posts and pages will be removed from public view without preserving their associated elements. Changing a published post or page’s status to Draft also causes Google to remove it from its index, undermining your SEO efforts.

Therefore, unpublishing is more suitable for content that needs major changes. For example, outdated or irrelevant posts or pages that need to be rewritten and republished anyway.

You’ll need to install a third-party archives plugin like LH Archived Post Status to do this, as WordPress doesn’t provide this feature by default.

Repurpose Your Content

If content quality is the reason you want to unpublish your WordPress post or page, consider giving it a new life.

Repurposing content is a strategic approach to maximize the value of your existing website material. Research how competitor websites write about the same topic and try to improve upon them by making your content more unique and interesting.

For example, an old blog post can be revamped into a new article, transformed into an engaging infographic, or used as material for a video or email newsletter.

Alternatively, merge related content pieces into comprehensive guides or resource hubs. Update statistics, add new insights, and republish the content as a more extensive, polished piece.

As you repurpose the content, remember to optimize it for current search engine algorithms. Update keywords, meta descriptions, and headers for improved search engine visibility.

Assess the Impact on SEO and User Experience (UX)

Unpublishing certain pages or posts can have implications for SEO because it can lead to the creation of broken links. Moreover, search engine crawlers won’t be able to index the drafted post or page.

In terms of UX, a visitor might potentially see an Error 404 Page Not Found instead of the page or post they’re looking for.

If you must unpublish a WordPress page or post, creating WordPress 301 redirects can minimize negative impacts on your SEO and UX. Instead of getting an error page, visitors will be redirected to the new URL.

You can also prevent SEO robot crawlers from indexing your content entirely. This is ideal when you want to keep the page private from visitors and search engines.

Simply navigate to Settings → Reading from your WordPress dashboard. Then, find the Search engine visibility option and check the box beside Discourage search engines from indexing this site. Hit Save Changes.

Unpublishing a WordPress Site FAQ

To learn more about how to unpublish a WordPress site, check out these answers to frequently asked questions about the topic.

With the information provided in this guide, you can confidently navigate through the process of unpublishing on WordPress. Good luck!