Problems
Our client has a private form on his website, which can be accessed directly using its public page URL. He wants to protect this form in particular and the page content at large from Google indexing, abuse, and spam.
Apparently, when it comes to content protection, protecting using passwords or creating a membership site are the most viable and popular options. However, our client does want these pages to be "public" so that his clients can access them upon requests.
That's why the typical solutions such as protecting the page with a password or under a membership site are purely and simply overkilling.
Proposed Solution
We come up with a rather different solution to resolve the problem. First, we realize we have to protect the original page URL so that it's no longer accessible to anyone. Our plugin must also block Google and other search engines from indexing and displaying this page on their search results.
Second, once we block its original URL, we have to find another way to our client to share the page with his clients. So we come up with the so-called "private links" which basically provide public yet dynamic URLs to access the WordPress protected pages and posts.
The client can create as many private links per post as he wants to and share it with others via emails and various social channels.
Private vs Original page URL?
Typically, when someone obtains the private links, they can access and share your private content freely. So what's the difference between Private vs Original page URL you may wonder?
Actually, there are a few key differences between the two:
- First, private links are not indexed and followed by Google and other search engines
- Second, private links can be obscured or customizable just like any other links
- Last but not least, private links can be restricted with access limit or expiry. In other words, private links can be automatically expired by clicks and/or days. This gives you control over who can view your protected content as well as prevent them from abuse and share without permission.
Applications
There is a wide range of applications for Protect Pages & Posts.
To begin with, you can protect WordPress private content that shouldn't be accessible to anyone but not too important to password protect or put them under proper authentication like a membership site.
For instance, you may want to protect your "Thank you" and "Downloads" pages which may contain giveaway ebooks and documents. Obviously, you don't want everyone to access these files until they subscribe to your email list.
Now let's take our client's case for example. The company offers measurement service in the construction industry. If a client wants to book that measurement service, they'll make contact with the company as follows:
- The client sends them a normal email to request a quote.
- The company prepare the quote and send it back to the client together with a link which leads them to a form page.
- The client confirms the quote and places the order for the measurement service through this web form.
As the form page is used to confirm and place orders, the company wants to protect the page URL so that it can’t be spammed and abused.
By using our Protect Pages & Posts plugin, the company can now stop the form page from spam and abuse with just some simple steps:
- Protect the form page with our plugin
- Create a new private link say
preventdirectaccess.com/member/service-order-form - Restrict the private link access by clicks or days. The page URL will expire after that
- Embed this link to quote email
Future Improvement
We have integrated Protect Pages & Posts with WooCommerce email templates. It will come in even more useful if our plugin is integrated with various Email Marketing platforms such as GetResponse and ActiveCampaign so that you can send dynamically expiring page URLs to your subscribers on automation. As a result, they will be able to access but not to share your Thank you and Downloads page within a short timeframe.
