All blogs are open to the public when they are first created. If you wish to run a more private blog, it is important to review and select the setting that is appropriate for your blog. This should be done BEFORE any content is added, to prevent it from being cached by sites like Google.

1. Log into the Dashboard of your blog.
2. In the sidebar on the left, click the ‘Settings’ heading.
3. Click ‘Reading’ from the list of options in the resulting submenu.
4. Read through the options listed in the “Site Visibility” section of the page, and select the level of visibility that works best for your situation.
5. Click ‘Save Changes’.

*Please Note: If you want people to be able to subscribe to your blog using a News Reader (like Google Reader), you will need to select one of the top two options, that make it visible to the public. Most news readers are not sophisticated enough to read blogs that require a login and password. Also, our site collects all public posts on the Global Posts blog — if you wish to be excluded from this, but still need public access, you can set it to block search engines.

1. Allow search engines to index this site (MOST PUBLIC option)
   This option is necessary if you want people to be able to find your site by using a search engine. It will also include your posts in the list of recent posts found on the main blog.ryerson website.
2. Discourage search engines from indexing this site
   This option is great if you don’t want to restrict people from accessing your site, but you don’t really want it to be found by using a search engine. Keep in mind that this option merely asks search engines not to index your site. We have no way of ensuring they honour this request. If you select this option, your posts will not appear in the list of recent posts found on the main blog.ryerson website, but your posts can still be aggregated.
3. Visitors must have a login – anyone that is a registered user of blog.ryerson.ca can gain access.
   This ensures your blog is not visible to the public, but can be viewed by anyone who has a my.ryerson account and is logged in to blog.ryerson.ca. Posts on these sites cannot be aggregated.
4. Only registered users of this blogs can have access – anyone found under Users > All Users can have access.
   Only people whose accounts have been added to your blog can see your blog. Posts on these sites cannot be aggregated.
5. Only administrators can visit – good for testing purposes before making it live. (MOST PRIVATE option)
   Only people whose accounts have been added to your blog with an “Administrator” role and the blog.ryerson Network administrators can see your blog. Posts on these sites cannot be aggregated.
6. Anyone that visits must first provide this password (NEW!)
   Blog administrators have the ability to set a single password to be entered by visitors of the site. Note: Anyone that is a registered user of this blog won’t need this password.