Blog Master G

Word. And photos, too.

Blog Master G random header image

Restricting Blog Access

Wednesday, October 15th, 2003 · 2 Comments

Drastic life changes call for drastic site measures. If you’re reading this today or soon hereafter, either you have the full and direct URL to my blog bookmarked (gabeanderson.com/life/index.php), you’ve stumbled across my home page after finding one of my archives through a Google search, or you’ve contacted me to request site access.

I spent most of today “securing” my site (see new Greetings page) to make it a bit harder to track me down — not that it’s hard by any means. But as I embark on big life changes and the search for a new job, I’d rather make learning everything about me a little less easy for potential employers. I’ve been feeling rather naked lately. (Ironic, given my yearlong quest to climb the Google rankings.)

Sorry.

This is certainly not an effort to discourage you from reading my blog or to turn anyone away. It just makes me feel a bit better knowing I won’t be quite so exposed.

So how did I accomplish this little trick, you ask? Here are the major highlights of how I did this:

  1. Using a different Movable Type blog installed on the top level of my site, I created a new individual archive template to get the look, feel, and functionality I wanted.
  2. The email form is leveraging the MT comment template, but I tweaked it around (the comment field “text” is actually the “email address” field in my application) to get the behavior I wanted. I also modified the comment error template.
  3. “Comments” do not appear anywhere; I simply receive an email when someone requests site access.
  4. I created a new MT entry whose individual archive is stored like this: <$MTEntryTitle dirify=”1″$>/index.php. This created the /greetings directory containing only the index.php file.
  5. I changed the .htaccess file in the top level of my site to point to /greetings.
  6. Ditto for the .htaccess file in /life. There, I also switched precedence from index.php to index.html.
  7. I ensured that all /life references throughout my site navigation now point to the full blog URL: gabeanderson.com/life/index.php.
  8. I changed the .htaccess file in /home to point to the full blog URL (same as above).

In other words, the key here is the .htaccess switch to make my Web server look first at index.html (causing the /life redirect to /greetings), while leaving intact the index.php file that my blog has always used — and requiring that anyone viewing this page enter the full URL, inclusive of index.php.

And there you have it. Meet my blog with semi-restricted access.

Tags: site features

2 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Dave Reed // Oct 15, 2003 at 9:24 pm

    Great idea, Gabe! I like what you’ve done, and it works nicely. Well done!

  • 2 Dave Reed // Oct 15, 2003 at 9:26 pm

    Well done! It looks good!