Author: Joseph Dickson

Over the that weekend I had been using WordPress to take notes at WordCamp Orange County and realized that WordPress’ block editor is useful as a note taking environment. But what If I don’t want these notes to be public?

Using a template to restrict access

I duplicated TwentyNineteen’s single.php template and wrapped the loop in a conditional tag is_user_logged_in().

The code

<?php
/**
 * Single post and page template for restricting the title and content unless the user is logged in
 * Sources: 
 * https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-themes/create-custom-single-post-templates-for-specific-posts-or-sections-in-wordpress/
 * https://codex.wordpress.org/Conditional_Tags
 *
 * @link https://developer.wordpress.org/themes/basics/template-hierarchy/#single-post
 *
 * @package WordPress
 * @subpackage Twenty_Nineteen
 * @since 1.0.0
 *
 * License: GPL 2 or later
 *
 * Template Name: Log in Required
 * Template Post Type: post, page
 *
 */

get_header();
?>

	<div id="primary" class="content-area">
		<main id="main" class="site-main">

<?php
	if ( is_user_logged_in() ) {  // check if user is logged in

/* * 
 * Start the Loop 
 * This example  uses TwentyNineteen for the loop, if using a different theme subsitute that loop here.
 * */
		while ( have_posts() ) :
			the_post();

			get_template_part( 'template-parts/content/content', 'single' );

			if ( is_singular( 'attachment' ) ) {
				// Parent post navigation.
				the_post_navigation(
					array(
						/* translators: %s: parent post link */
						'prev_text' => sprintf( __( '<span class="meta-nav">Published in</span><span class="post-title">%s</span>', 'twentynineteen' ), '%title' ),
					)
				);
			} elseif ( is_singular( 'post' ) ) {
				// Previous/next post navigation.
				the_post_navigation(
					array(
						'next_text' => '<span class="meta-nav" aria-hidden="true">' . __( 'Next Post', 'twentynineteen' ) . '</span> ' .
							'<span class="screen-reader-text">' . __( 'Next post:', 'twentynineteen' ) . '</span> <br/>' .
							'<span class="post-title">%title</span>',
						'prev_text' => '<span class="meta-nav" aria-hidden="true">' . __( 'Previous Post', 'twentynineteen' ) . '</span> ' .
							'<span class="screen-reader-text">' . __( 'Previous post:', 'twentynineteen' ) . '</span> <br/>' .
							'<span class="post-title">%title</span>',
					)
				);
			}

			// If comments are open or we have at least one comment, load up the comment template.
			if ( comments_open() || get_comments_number() ) {
				comments_template();
			}

		endwhile; // End of the TwentyNineteen  loop.
    
	} else { // If not logged in present a link to log into the site
		echo '<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="' .  wp_login_url( get_permalink() ) . '" title="Login">Log in to view this post</a></p>';
	}
		?>

		</main><!-- #main -->
	</div><!-- #primary -->

<?php
get_footer();

View this code in my GitHub gist.

How does this code work?

Simply put, is_user_logged in() will check if the user is logged before it displays the post. If not they’re presented with a link to log in.

What it doesn’t do?

Using this post and page template will only restrict the post page. The excerpt or content will still display on archive pages unless those loops run a similar conditional check.