Control your site’s visibility

Your WordPress.com site’s visibility settings control who can view your site. Use this guide to find these settings and choose whether to make your site public, put it in Coming Soon mode, or allow only approved users to view your site.

In this video, you’ll learn how to control your WordPress.com site’s visibility. It demonstrates finding your privacy settings and choosing whether your site is public, in Coming Soon mode, or private to approved users only.

To access your site’s visibility settings:

1. Visit your site’s dashboard.
2. Navigate to Settings → Reading.

3. Scroll to the Site Visibility section.
4. Choose from three visibility options (or launch your site):
   • Coming Soon: Your site is hidden from visitors while you’re working on it. Use this to temporarily unpublish your website. You can share a preview link with select people.
   • Public: Your site is visible to everyone.
   • Private: Your site is only visible to you and any users you approve. Use this to unpublish your website and allow only approved users to view your site. If you don’t see the Private option, your site hasn’t been launched yet.
5. Click Save Changes.

Looking for individual post or page privacy? These settings control your entire site’s visibility. To restrict access to a specific post or page, open it in the editor and use the Visibility option in the sidebar. See Control who can see a page or post for instructions.

To opt out of sharing your site’s public content with third parties (including AI models), visit the Prevent third-party sharing guide.

There are two common reasons your site may show a Coming Soon page unexpectedly:

• You changed the setting but the site still shows Coming Soon. Confirm that Settings → Reading → Site Visibility is set to Public and click Save Changes. If the page still shows Coming Soon, try clearing your browser cache.
• Your plan recently expired. When a paid plan expires, your site reverts to Coming Soon mode automatically. Follow the steps in Restore your site after the plan expires, then navigate to Settings → Reading, set Site Visibility to Public, and click Save Changes.

AI agents can check how your site is currently set to appear, switch it between public, private, and coming soon, and launch it when you’re ready. Here are some things you can ask an agent to do:

• “Is yourgroovysite.wordpress.com public right now, or is it still showing a coming soon page?”
• “Make yourgroovysite.wordpress.com private so only the people I approve can see it.”
• “Switch yourgroovydomain.com back to coming soon while I redesign the homepage.”

Visit the guides below to learn more about each privacy setting:

• Display a coming soon page
• Make your website public
• Make your website private
• Launch your site