# Open for the staff. Closed to the rest.

> Close your PixelGlass site to everyone but your staff, before a launch or for a newsletter that lives in the inbox. One setting in Settings › General.

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.

## 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

> 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.

## Examples

- **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

### 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.

## See also

- [Connect your own domain](https://pixelglass.co/guides/connect-your-own-domain): Put your PixelGlass site on blog.example.com or example.com: type the domain, add the DNS records it shows, and PixelGlass checks them for you.
- [Invite your team](https://pixelglass.co/guides/invite-your-team): Invite writers, editors and admins to your PixelGlass publication by email, each with a role that sets what they may do. No price per seat.
- [Start a newsletter](https://pixelglass.co/guides/start-a-newsletter): Every PixelGlass site starts with a newsletter. Name it, choose who joins, and send any post to it. Set up by hand; your agent writes the issues.
- [Newsletters](https://pixelglass.co/features/newsletters): Send every post as a newsletter: many lists, two email designs, opens and clicks, links you can fix after sending. From $9 a month.
- [SEO and AI search](https://pixelglass.co/features/seo): Every PixelGlass site is ready for Google and AI answer engines: llms.txt, a Markdown twin of every post, sitemaps, feeds, structured data and hreflang.
- [Every guide](https://pixelglass.co/guides)
- [Pricing](https://pixelglass.co/pricing): every feature on every plan, 14 days free
- [Create your site](https://pixelglass.co/signup)