Intranet & Private Site – All-In-One Intranet vs Controlled Admin Access

WordPress is one of the most popular platforms for building corporate intranets and private company websites. The problem is that WordPress was designed for public-facing sites. Making it work as a private intranet typically requires installing multiple plugins, configuring each one separately, and hoping they all play nicely together. All-In-One Intranet solves this by giving you everything you need in a single plugin to turn your WordPress site into a fully private intranet. Enable privacy with one checkbox, set up auto-logout to protect sensitive information, configure where users land after login, and manage multisite access controls – all from one settings page. Whether you are building a corporate intranet, a private knowledge base, a restricted client portal, or an internal communications hub, this plugin handles the foundational privacy and access control so you can focus on your content. What is an Intranet? An intranet is a private website or network used internally by an organization. Unlike a public website, an intranet is only accessible to authorized users – typically employees, contractors, or specific team members. Common uses for a WordPress intranet include: Internal company communications and announcements Employee handbooks, policies, and procedures Knowledge bases and documentation wikis Project collaboration and team coordination HR portals for onboarding and training materials Client portals with restricted access to project files WordPress is well suited for all of these because of its familiar editing interface, extensive plugin ecosystem, and flexible user role system. All-In-One Intranet provides the access control layer that makes it all work. Features All-In-One Intranet includes five core features designed to cover the most common intranet requirements: One-Click Private Site Enable the “Force site to be entirely private” checkbox, and your entire WordPress site becomes restricted to logged-in users only. Anyone who is not logged in gets redirected to the WordPress login page automatically. This single setting handles multiple layers of privacy at once: Page and post access – all frontend content requires authentication REST API protection – unauthenticated REST API requests are blocked with a 401 error, preventing data leaks through the API XML-RPC blocking – XML-RPC is disabled entirely when privacy is active, closing another potential access vector Search engine blocking – the robots.txt file is automatically updated to disallow all crawling, keeping your private content out of search indexes Pingback suppression – outgoing pingbacks and trackbacks are disabled so your private site does not announce itself to external services Feed protection – RSS, Atom, and comment feeds require authentication, so protected posts and comments cannot be read through /feed/ or crafted feed URLs Comment and trackback blocking – unauthenticated visitors cannot post comments or trackbacks to protected content through wp-comments-post.php or wp-trackback.php Admin endpoint gating – the admin-ajax.php and admin-post.php handlers require a valid login, so public “nopriv” actions registered by your theme or other plugins do not run for logged-out visitors Entry-point coverage – WordPress files that load the site outside the normal page render, such as wp-links-opml.php (the blogroll and OPML export) and wp-activate.php, are sealed so they cannot leak post content, feeds, your site title, or the WordPress version number Slug enumeration prevention – WordPress’s canonical redirect no longer reveals the slugs of private posts to unauthenticated visitors on pretty permalinks Role and membership enforcement – the REST API and comment gates apply the same role and sub-site membership checks as the rest of the site, so a logged-in user with no role, or who is not a member of the current sub-site, cannot read API content or post comments they would otherwise be blocked from The plugin also monitors your WordPress registration settings. If “Anyone can register” is enabled on a single site, or if open registration is allowed on a multisite network, the plugin displays a warning on the settings page so you can fix it before it becomes a problem. Auto-Logout for Inactive Users Shared workstations and forgotten browser tabs are a real security risk for intranets. The auto-logout feature lets you set a maximum idle time – in minutes, hours, or days – after which users are automatically logged out. The plugin tracks each user’s last activity timestamp. On every page load, it checks whether the configured idle time has been exceeded. If a user has been inactive for too long, they are logged out immediately and redirected back to the page they were viewing, which triggers the login wall if the site is private. This protects sensitive company information without requiring users to remember to log out manually. Set it to 30 minutes for high-security environments, a few hours for typical office use, or leave it blank to disable the feature entirely. Custom Login Redirect By default, WordPress sends users to the dashboard after they log in. For an intranet, this is not useful – your team is logging in to read content, not to manage the site. The login redirect feature lets you set any URL on your site as the post-login landing page. Point it to your company homepage, a news feed, or a team dashboard so users see relevant content right away. This redirect only applies when users log in directly through the standard WordPress login page. If a user tries to access a specific page and gets redirected to log in first, they will be sent back to that page after authentication – not to the custom redirect URL. This keeps the user experience smooth. Multisite Sub-site Privacy If you run a WordPress multisite network, you can require logged-in users to be members of a specific sub-site before they can view it. This is useful for organizations with multiple departments, teams, or client areas – each with their own sub-site that should only be visible to relevant people. When a user who is logged in but not a member of the current sub-site tries to access it, they see a message listing all the sub-sites they do have access to, with clickable links to navigate there. Access to the Network Admin area is never restricted by this setting. This option works in combination with the main privacy setting. Enable private site first, then enable sub-site membership requirements for granular access control across your network. Multisite Default Role Assignment Managing user access across multiple sub-sites in a WordPress network can be tedious. Every time you add a new user or create a new sub-site, you would need to manually assign roles across all the relevant sites. The default role assignment feature automates this. Choose a role (Subscriber, Editor, Administrator, or any custom role), and the plugin handles the rest: When a new user is created, they are automatically added to every active sub-site in the network with the selected role When a new sub-site is created, all existing users are automatically added to it with the selected role This saves significant administration time, especially for growing organizations where new employees and new sites are added regularly. How to Make Your WordPress Site Private Setting up a private WordPress site with All-In-One Intranet takes about one minute: Install and activate the plugin from the WordPress plugin directory Go to Settings > All-In-One Intranet in your WordPress admin (or Network Admin > Settings > All-In-One Intranet for multisite) Check the box labeled “Force site to be entirely private” Click Save Changes That is all it takes. Your site is now private. Any visitor who is not logged in will be redirected to the WordPress login page. The REST API, XML-RPC, and search engine indexing are all locked down automatically. If you see a warning about registration settings after enabling privacy, follow the link in the warning to disable open registration and close the gap. How to Set Up Auto-Logout for Inactive Users The auto-logout feature protects your intranet from unattended browser sessions: Go to Settings > All-In-One Intranet Find the Auto Logout section Enter a number in the time field (e.g., 30) Select the time unit from the dropdown: Minutes, Hours, or Days Click Save Changes Users who are inactive for longer than the configured period will be logged out on their next page interaction. Their activity timer resets on every page load, so active users are never interrupted. To disable auto-logout, clear the time field and save. How to Configure Login Redirect To send users to a specific page after they log in: Go to Settings > All-In-One Intranet Find the Login Redirect section Enter the full URL of your desired landing page (e.g., https://example.com/welcome) Click Save Changes Users who log in via /wp-login.php will now land on that page instead of the WordPress dashboard. Users who were redirected to the login page from a specific URL will still return to that URL after logging in. How to Set Up a WordPress Multisite Intranet For organizations running a WordPress multisite network: Go to Network Admin > Settings > All-In-One Intranet Enable “Force site to be entirely private” to restrict the entire network to logged-in users Optionally enable “Require logged-in users to be members of a sub-site to view it” for per-site access control Under Sub-site Membership, select a default role to automatically assign users to sub-sites Click Save Changes The privacy and membership settings apply network-wide. The default role assignment runs automatically when new users or new sub-sites are created. Existing sub-sites and users are not affected retroactively when you change the role setting. Security Features All-In-One Intranet takes a layered approach to access control: Authentication enforcement – uses WordPress’s built-in auth_redirect() function for reliable login redirection REST API lockdown – blocks unauthenticated API requests, preventing data access through endpoints like /wp-json/wp/v2/posts XML-RPC disabling – completely disables XML-RPC when privacy is active No-role user handling – on single-site installations, users who are logged in but have no assigned role are logged out and shown an error message, preventing access by deactivated accounts Registration monitoring – displays admin warnings if WordPress is configured to allow open registration, which would undermine your private site setup Nonce verification – all settings forms use WordPress nonce validation to prevent cross-site request forgery Capability checks – settings pages require manage_options (single site) or manage_network_options (multisite) capabilities Note that media uploads (images, PDFs, etc.) remain accessible to anyone who knows their direct URL. This is a limitation of how WordPress stores media files and is common to most privacy plugins. If you need to protect individual file downloads, consider a dedicated file protection plugin alongside All-In-One Intranet. For Developers All-In-One Intranet provides the aioi_allow_public_access filter for developers who need to make specific pages or endpoints accessible without authentication. This filter runs during both the template redirect check and the REST API dispatch check. Return true to allow public access for the current request: add_filter( 'aioi_allow_public_access', function( $allow ) { // Allow public access to a specific page if ( is_page( 'public-landing' ) ) { return true; } return $allow; } ); This is useful for exposing specific landing pages, webhook endpoints, or custom API routes while keeping the rest of the site private. Google Workspace Integration If your organization uses Google Workspace (formerly Google Apps), two companion plugins extend your intranet: Google Apps Login – lets employees sign in to WordPress using their Google Workspace accounts. Domain admins can manage WordPress access entirely from the Google Admin Console, and only authorized employees can access the intranet. Google Drive Embedder – allows authors to embed Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and other Drive files directly into pages and posts. Useful for intranets where documentation lives in Google Drive. Visit wp-glogin.com for more information about these and other plugins.

Give a temporary limited admin. access to themes designers, plugins developers and support agents. The plugin is simple and clean, it helps the administrator to create a user with a temporary access and choose which pages in your admin area which you don’t want the user to access. send the details to the user and when he finished his task, you can easily deactivate the account and activate it later. Upgrade to Pro Now Documentation Features Menu Filter The plugin will allow you to select admin menu items that you want to restrict for the created admin. Not only the plugin will hide the menu item from the admin but it also will block the page if they access it in some other way. Expiration Time You may don’t want to give access indefinitely, the plugin allows you to set an expiration time for the restricted admin account. After the account expires, the account will no longer be able to login into the admin dashboard. Moreover, you can always extend the expiry time or change it. Hide Admin Bar WordPress offers an admin bar to provide quick access to some pages or to perform some actions. Using the plugin, you can hide the admin bar links at the top of the page will be hidden in both the frontend and admin areas. Disable Access You can always disable the restricted admin account at any time. For example, if you gave a developer access to fix a bug or install a theme, when they finish the task you can disable their account. This will block login in using the account but it will retain the account’s information in case you wanted to give them access in the future. Pro Features Plugins Internal Pages Take more control and restrict access to plugins’ internal pages. For example, you would like to give access to the WooCommerce Settings page, but you do not want the account to see the Payments Gateways tab. Currently, the plugin supports WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads and BuddyPress. In the future, we will add support for more plugins. No Password Login Add some convenience when sending access to the user, you can generate a secure login URL for the user, and the user will use the link to login into the dashboard without the need for a password. You can also disable login by a password for restricted admins, this will restrict the admin from login in using a password or sending a reset password email. Activity Log Keep track of what restricted admins have done while logged in, the plugin will log more than 20 actions such as activating/deactivating/deleting a plugin, switching a theme, deleting a theme, exporting data, publishing/deleting a post and uploading a file. Remote Logout At any given time, you can force logging out any restricted admin if you no longer need them logged in the admin dashboard. This action will log them out on all logged-in devices and locations.