Private Content

Drupal

Private Content

I wanted a (Drupal) space where I could have content that is not accessible to anyone but myself. I have been thinking about this for a while and have not been able to find a feature on Drupal itself that would do this for me.

What does not work

I tried creating a new content type:

Administer > Content Management > Content types > Add content type^[tab]

and then via User Permissions, not allowing specific user types from accessing the new 'content type'.

However, in the User Permissions

Administer > User Management > Permissions

Drupal does not offer a way that allow users to see some 'nodes' (i.e. content types) and not be able to see other content types at the same time. The 'node module' under 'user permissions' either allows them to see all content types or not.

You might just want to check my Drupal specifications to make sure we are on the same page and that this Drupal tutorial is relevant to you.

My "Solution"

Private Drupal and Node Accessibility

So to create a space where I can basically blog in private (e.g. a private diary), I have created a Drupal site where I have made asses to all the nodes inaccessible to all except my own user role (e.g. administrator role). In other words, I have done the following:

Administer > User Management > Permissions > node module

and I have given permission only to one user role which only I have access to.

And as a further security, I have also removed the 'user login' block from all pages:

Administer > Site Building > Blocks > user login (block) = <none>

So now, when anyone visits my 'private' Drupal site, all they see is:

Access denied
You are not authorized to access this page.

Strong Password

And as an extra precaution to prevent anyone getting into the site, I have also increased the strength of the password to log into my user role account.

Robots Meta Tags

I have also set the default meta tags on my (private) Drupal site so that Google will not try to index the sites nor to display any snippets from them.

Administer > Content Management > Meta Tags > Default and specific meta tags

I have set all the default robots meta tags to no.. so my (private) contents are hopefully not going to be indexed, searched, cached, archived, etc. anywhere.

Other Approaches

There are probably other work-arounds or add-ons that you could use to make some of your content inaccessible to unauthorized access. This approach for me was the simplest way to go.