How do you go about "hiding" a blog?

[surelybwh]

I've just set up a blog for my niece. She plans to use it so that friends and family can know more about what's going on with her and her family. But, at the same time, she would prefer that no one else find it. Realizing that's not 100 percent possible, what can be done to minimize it?

I've set up her domain w/ private registration. And when I installed WordPress, it asked a question about privacy. That's resulted in this line in the HTML

<meta name='robots' content='noindex,nofollow' />

I'm wondering if there are other things I should do?

[Mittineague]

If you have an Apache server you could password protect the blog's root install folder. Everyone could use the same name and password, but if the user base is small enough it should be adequate.

[HAWK]

That's resulted in this line in the HTML

<meta name='robots' content='noindex,nofollow' />

That will ensure that it is not indexed by any search engines. That means that the only way anyone will find it is by either guessing the URL or following a link that someone places on another page. Unless your niece is famous or has a stalker, I would say the chances of either of those things happening are pretty slim.

[rcj662]

Password protect is nice idea. The no follow index should work if you own domain name and hosting unless someone posts url on net or spyware finds it in email.

[EJ]

Password protecting is a good idea, but won't it be a bit of a bother telling everyone? Or not. My friend used to have a password protected blog, I think it's probably the best idea for what you want.

[SimplyFu]

use private protected blog, access only by password. and deactivate the ping blog service.