WordPress, out of the box, only provides two visibility modes for blog posts: public and private. Public posts, of course, are visible to anyone, while private posts are visible only to the author of that post. For users who want a subscription-style post visibility in place of these coarse categories, the Post Restrictions plugin comes in handy. This plugin utilizes the roles capabilities of WordPress 2.0 to offer subscription-style posts, much like that of premium articles offered by by the Wall Street Journal or Morning Star, and available only to registered users of your blog.

This allows you to write personal posts accessible to only those close to you with registered accounts, while maintaining a professional web site to anonymous passerbys. As a result, over the next few months you’ll see the number of posts on this web site trimmed significantly. They haven’t been deleted — they’ve just been moved to the subscribers-only section.