Running a publication

Open for the staff.
Closed to the rest.

Set Who can read the site to Private, and only your signed-in staff read it. Search engines are kept out, and your newsletter still goes. Choose Public again when you launch.

Create your site – free Start from your agent
Say it to your agent

Draft the five posts for our launch week, and keep them as drafts until I say go.

  • create_post
  • render_page
  • preview_theme

Two ways to do it.

By hand

In the admin

  1. As the owner or an admin, open Settings › General.
  2. Under Who can read the site, choose Private: only your staff can read it. Press Save.
  3. A visitor now sees This site is private, with Subscribe and Sign in while readers can sign up, and Staff sign in.
  4. Read the site yourself while signed in to the admin. On your own domain, Staff sign in takes you to your pixelglass.me address.
  5. To open it, choose Public and press Save.

With your agent

In Claude, ChatGPT or your editor

Draft the five posts for our launch week, and keep them as drafts until I say go.

Show me how the front page looks with the new theme before we open the site.

The tools it calls

  • create_post
  • render_page
  • preview_theme

No tool changes who can read the site: an admin sets it in Settings › General. A private site does not stop your agent: it writes, and render_page shows it the pages a visitor will see.

For example

  • Built in private, opened on launch day

    A coffee roaster builds the site for a month with the doors shut, then chooses Public the morning the shop opens.

  • A letter that lives in the inbox

    An economist sends a weekly letter and keeps the site private. Subscribers still join, and each issue's links lead to a view of it in the browser.

  • A team's internal notes

    A design studio keeps its process notes on a private site that every staff member reads, whatever their role.

Questions, answered

Can I make my PixelGlass site private?
Yes. In Settings › General, set Who can read the site to Private. Only signed-in staff read it; everyone else sees a page that says the site is private.
Do newsletters still go out from a private site?
Yes. A private PixelGlass site still sends its newsletters. Readers can still subscribe, and the links in the email lead to a browser view of that issue.
Does a private site show up in Google?
No. A private PixelGlass site tells search engines to keep out of every page and gives no sitemap. Each private page is marked noindex and never stored in a shared cache.
Why is my new site private already?
A PixelGlass site on its free trial is private, for its owner alone. Public shows Upgrade to unlock until the site has a plan, and then it follows your choice.
Who can read a private site?
Every signed-in staff member, whatever their role. A reader who is signed in as a member does not get in.

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