How to Make Sure a Joomla Page is Private

Often you have pages on your website that you want to keep private - either for your staff or for you registered members.

This week we'll walk you through how to keep search engine bots from indexing certain articles.

Method #1

1. In your Joomla Admin panel, go to Content >> Article Manager and open the article you wish to keep private.
2. On the right-hand side under "Parameters (Article)" you will see a field labled "Access Level".
   
3. If you set this to "Registered" then only people at the "Registered" user level and above will be able to see the article.
4. If you set this to "Special" then only people at the "Author" user level and above will be able to see the article.

Method #2

1. In your Joomla Admin panel, go to Content >> Article Manager and open the article you wish to keep private.
2. On the right-hand side under "Metadata Information" you will see a field labled "Robots".
   
3. You can write "noindex" into this box and search engines should recognize that this page should not be indexed

To verify that this has worked, visit the secret page on the front of your site and click "View Source" in your browser. If everything has worked correctly you should be able to see a line in the code looking like this:

< meta name="robots" content="nofollow" / >

(we've added spaces around the < and > signs so you can see the code)

Would you like 100s more of these Joomla tutorials - the same used by Apple, Sun and IBM to learn Joomla? Every day, people are building great websites with Joomla. With Open Source Training, they have access to online classes and support from the best teachers in the Joomla world. Our professional teachers have created videos and tutorials for you that walk you step-by-step through everything you'll need to build wonderful Joomla websites. These are the same lessons we use to help clients like Apple, Sun, IBM, Hewlett-Packard and NASA. What's In Your Joomla Training?   Your Joomla Subscription [-] Same-Day Support Unlimited Joomla questions, all answered within 24 hours. Beginner-level Class 8 hours of video tutorials introducing you to all the key Joomla concepts. Template Design Class A complete video class showing you how to build and modify Joomla templates. Search Engine Class 45 detailed tutorials on optimizing your Joomla site for search engines. New tutorials every week New weekly step-by-step tutorials on topics suggested by members. Bonus Templates Two commercial Joomla templates, Bolt and Breeze Intermediate-level Class Due August 2010