How to UnPublish a Blog Post in WordPress Website?

Do you want to unpublish a blog post from your WordPress Site?

There are several ways to unpublish your blog post in WordPress. All the ways give you different control over the action of unpublishing the blog posts.

In this article, I am going to tell you all the quick and easy ways to hide the post from your site.

• Delete the Post
• Draft the Post
• Private the Post
• Use the Plugin
• Delete the Site

Delete The Post

The quickest way to hide the post is to delete it. Deleting it will remove the post from your site immediately. 

However, the post is not deleted entirely by this process. You can find the post in the Trash.

Restore it later if you need the post. But for the moment, the post will vanish from the homepage.

Draft the Post

Drafting the post will hide the post from all the visitors of the blog. But the admin would be able to find the post with other published posts.

Steps to unpublish the blog post in the Classic Editor:

1. Login to your admin dashboard
2. Open the post backend that you want to Unpublish
3. Locate the Publish box on the page
4. Check the Status of the Post
5. Click on the Edit
6. Select the Draft option
7. Update the Post

Steps to unpublish a blog post in WordPress Block Editor:

1. Login to your admin dashboard
2. Open the post backend that you want to unpublish
3. Locate the ‘Switch to Draft’ at the head of the page
4. Click on it
5. Confirm you want to Unpublish the Post

The post is no longer published on your blog. The URL of the post will open up a 404 page now. But only for the visitors.

The admin of the site and the author of the post will still see the post.

You can draft the posts within the dashboard itself without opening the post.

This way, you can unpublish many posts on the WordPress website quickly.

Make the Post Private

Another way to unpublish a post is to make it private.

When you draft a published post, you hide it from all of your site visitors. In the case of Private Post, only the logged-in member can see the post.

If any logged-out visitor opens the URL, the browser will display the 404 pages while the logged-in user would be able to read the post.

Always keep your WordPress Login security intact.

Steps to Private the blog post in the Classic Editor:

1. Go to your admin dashboard
2. Open the backend of the post you want to make Private
3. Locate the Publish Box
4. Check the status of the post
5. Edit it
6. Click on the Private
7. Update the Post

Steps to Private the blog post in the Modern Editor:

1. Go to your admin dashboard
2. Open the backend of the post you want to make Private
3. Find the Status and Visibility Section at the top right of the page
4. Click on the Visibility option
5. Make the Post Private
6. Update the Post

The post is only visible to the Member, Editor, or Author of the site.

You can make the post private within the dashboard itself. 

Use the Plugin

You can install a Plugin to get more control over the posts. WP Hide Post offers you more flexibility in hiding the post from certain parts of your sites.

After the activation of the plugin, the Hide Post box would be enabled. You can locate the Meta Box in the document section.

You can take complete control over the visibility of your post with this plugin. But it only hides the article from the pages.

A visitor with the link to the post would be able to find the post.

How to Unpublish WordPress Site?

You can unpublish your entire site by deleting it. That is one way to do it.

You can install a coming soon plugin and put it on your site. Then you can work on your site while the website will remain inactive as long as you want.

It is a simple yet effective method to unpublish the website.

Now you know how to unpublish a blog post in WordPress website, use any one of them. If there is any problem, do mention it in the comments.