Private Blog Review

I heard from a handful of friends and readers that they too had considered taking their blogs private but were either unsure of how it worked or were worried about excluding people from their blog. Here is my review of the process and how easy or not-so-easy it actually was.

Note: This is strictly a review of a Blogger sponspored blog and does not cover any other source.

There are 3 main privacy settings via Blogger:

1. Allow EVERYONE to read your blog. This is of course the default setting and has no way of restricting access to unknown internet surfers.

2. Allow only INVITED people to read your blog. "Invited" is the key word here. Theoretically, the blogger can invite anyone that has an email address, regardless of which email application they use. However, when the person receives the invite and attempts to accept it, they will be diverted to a Blogger login page where they are prompted to login using a Google Account (most common form is Gmail). So this is where it got a little tricky. Some of you use Hotmail, AOL, work email, or another applications that were obviously not Google sponsored. Instead of asking everyone to create a Gmail account just for the sake of viewing our blog, I did create one universal Gmail account with a Login and Password that could be distibuted to people whom we choose. (Let me know if anyone has questions about how to did this). This provides more control over who is allowed access to the blog, but the downfall is that it can exclude people that you may or may not have been aware were reading it in the first place and wouldn't mind if they continued reading.

3. Allow only BLOG AUTHORS to read the blog. I think this type of blog serves a different kind of purpose. It is probably used for a group or organization of people who share ideas with each other within a group.

Overall, taking the blog private has served the purpose we were seeking. With a few past incidents involving strangers perusing our blog and bringing their opinions with them, we were worried about having too much personal information fully accessible to anyone and everyone, the good, the bad, and unfortunately the creepy.

Thanks to everyone who were willing to go one extra step to view our blog. We appreciate your understanding and cannot wait to share our future and journey with you guys.