How to Customize a Password Protected Page in WordPress

Password protection helps keep certain pages private, and creating a custom password-protected page on your WordPress site is very easy.

However, the default WordPress password-entry page looks plain and unappealing. So, you might want to change that with some simple customizations.

This article will guide you through the step-by-step process of customizing a password-protected page in WordPress.

Why Customize Password-Protected Pages in WordPress?

If you want to create a post or page on your WordPress blog that should only be visible to selected clients or members, you can lock it using the password protection feature.

Similarly, if you’re creating a new WordPress website and don’t want everyone to view it, then using a password-protected page makes sense.

However, the default password-protected page design is very basic and not attractive. Here’s a preview of what it looks like:

Customizing the password-protected page allows you to change its design and layout. This helps make your page more engaging, and you can match it to your brand for a more professional look and better user experience.

In the following sections, we’ll show you how to enable password protection in WordPress. We’ll also share different ways to customize a specific page, your entire site, and different sections.

Feel free to use the quick links below to jump ahead to your preferred section:

Ready to revamp your password-protected page design? Let’s get started!

How to Password-Protect a Page in WordPress

Before we show you how to customize a WordPress page, you should know that WordPress has built-in settings to password-protect your pages and posts.

All you have to do is edit a page or add a new one. Once you’re in the WordPress content editor, go ahead and click the ‘Public’ option under ‘Status & visibility’ in the settings panel on your right.

Next, you’ll see different ‘Post Visibility’ options.

Simply select the ‘Password Protected’ option and enter a password for your page.

Now, go ahead and click ‘Update’ or ‘Publish.’

You can now visit your website and see the password-protected page in action.

Now, let’s see how you can customize your default password-protected page.

Method 1: Customize Default Password Protected Design Using CSS Hero

When you enable password protection from your WordPress content editor, the page uses your site’s theme for styling.

To customize the page, you can simply use a tool like CSS Hero. It lets you edit the design and layout of your page without editing code.

First, you’ll need to install and activate the CSS Hero plugin. For more details, please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, the CSS hero option will be added to the WordPress admin bar at the top. Go ahead and click the ‘Customize with CSS Hero’ option.

This will launch the CSS Hero visual builder, where you can edit and customize your page.

To start, simply click on any element on the page.

Next, you can change the background colors, add a background image, use a different font, edit spacing, and more from the panel on your left.

For example, let’s go to the ‘Background’ tab and add a gradient background color. We’ll also change the color of the box where users need to type in the password and the color of the ‘Enter’ button.

Besides that, you can add a border around the main heading on the page by going to the Borders tab.

Simply choose a border width, color, style, and any other changes you like.

Once you’ve finished customizing, remember to click the ‘Save & Publish’ button at the bottom.

You can now visit your website to see the customized default password-protected page.

The drawback of using CSS Hero is that it doesn’t offer the flexibility and advanced customization options that a landing page builder offers.

For instance, you can’t add elements like contact forms, social media buttons, opt-in forms, countdown timers, and more using CSS Hero.

With that in mind, let’s see how you can use a landing page builder to customize specific password-protected pages in WordPress.

Method 2: Customize a Specific Password Protected Page Using SeedProd

Customizing a specific password-protected page is easiest with SeedProd, which is the best WordPress website and page builder.

For this tutorial, we’ll use the SeedProd Pro version because it includes premium templates and more customization features. But you can start with the SeedProd Lite version and create a coming-soon page for free.

First, let’s install and activate the SeedProd plugin. If you need help, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you’ll see SeedProd’s welcome screen in your WordPress dashboard.

From here, you’ll need to enter the license key and click the ‘Verify Key’ button to activate SeedProd Pro. Your license key is in your SeedProd account area.

After that, let’s head over to SeedProd » Landing Pages from your WordPress dashboard and add a new custom password-protected landing page.

Later in this article, we’ll show you how to choose which pages are password-protected. You can password-protect your entire site or only specific pages.

For this tutorial, we’ll create a coming soon page for a website launch with password protection. However, you can customize your design easily if you only use it to password-protect specific pages.

To start, simply click the ‘Set up a Coming Soon Page’ button.

On the next screen, SeedProd will show you different page templates so you can quickly customize them.

Go ahead and hover over any template you want to use and click the orange checkmark button.

After selecting a template, SeedProd will open a popup window titled ‘Enter your new page details.’

You just need to select a page name and URL slug, and then simply click the ‘Save and Start Editing the Page’ button.

This will launch the SeedProd drag-and-drop page builder.

Here, you can customize your password-protected landing page and add different elements like text, images, buttons, and more.

SeedProd also offers advanced blocks like an opt-in form, contact form, countdown timer, progress bar, social sharing options, and more.

To add an element, drag any block from the menu on your left and drop it onto the template to the right. Then, customize the element by clicking on it and adjusting the options that appear.

This is also how SeedProd allows you to add a password form to the front end of your page to protect your content.

First, you can add a ‘Custom HTML’ block in the SeedProd builder. Simply drag and drop the Custom HTML block onto the template.

Next, you can click on the ‘Custom HTML’ block.’

From here, you’ll want to enter the [seed_bypass_form] shortcode in the ‘Custom Code’ field.

Don’t forget to click the ‘Save’ button when you’re done. And that’s it!

Now, SeedProd also integrates with different email marketing services. You can add a contact form to your landing page and connect an email marketing tool to build your email list and stay in touch with users.

Simply go to the ‘Connect’ tab in the landing page builder and select your email marketing service.

Setting Up Password Protection For Specific Pages in SeedProd

After creating a custom coming soon page that uses the [seed_bypass_form] shortcode, the next step is to set up password protection on specific pages using SeedProd.

To start, you can go to the ‘Page Settings’ tab in the SeedProd builder and click on ‘Access Control’ settings.

After that, simply enter a password in the ‘Bypass URL’ field that people can use to access your restricted content.

Do note that the text you write in the ‘Bypass URL’ field will act as the password and also a link that clients and team members can use to detour the password protection and access the page.

SeedProd lets you exclude specific URLs from your sites, such as admin, login, dashboard, and account. This ensures that site owners don’t get locked out of their sites.

Now, you’ll need to choose which URLs will be password-protected.

Simply scroll down to the ‘Include/Exclude URLs’ section under the ‘Access Control’ settings. After that, select the ‘Include URLs’ option and then enter the specific pages you’d like to restrict.

When you’re done, simply click the ‘Save’ button at the top.

Next, you can go to the ‘General’ settings under the ‘Page Settings’ tab and change the Page Status from ‘Draft’ to ‘Publish.’

After that, you can close the landing page builder and head to SeedProd » Landing Pages from your WordPress admin panel.

From here, let’s click the toggle under ‘Coming Soon Mode’ to activate your custom password-protected page.

That’s all!

You’ve successfully created a custom password-protected landing page that will only appear on specific pages in WordPress.

Simply visit those pages on your website to see the customized password-protected page in action.

Bonus Tips: More Custom Password-Protected Page Use Cases

Want to explore more ways to use password protection on your WordPress site? Here are 2 tips to level up your site’s password-protected page.

Tip 1: Create a Custom Password Protected Page for Entire Website

Using SeedProd, you can also display your password-protected page on every page of your website. This way, users will need to enter a password to gain access to any of your content.

First, you can go to SeedProd » Landing Pages from your WordPress dashboard. Then, click the ‘Edit Page’ button in the ‘Coming Soon Mode’ panel.

Next, you’ll wan to head over to the ‘Page Settings’ tab at the top and go to ‘Access Control’ settings.

After that, you can scroll down to the ‘Include/Exclude URLs’ section and select the ‘Show on the Entire Website’ option.

Once you’ve made the changes, go ahead and click the ‘Save’ button at the top. SeedProd will then show the custom password-protected page on your entire website.

Tip 2: Create a Custom Password Protected Sections in WordPress

You can also password-protect different website sections in WordPress from different sets of users. This is useful if you’re running a membership website and want to control access to your content, plugins, apps, and other downloadable files.

The best way to restrict different parts of your website is by using MemberPress.

It’s the best WordPress membership plugin that lets you create multiple membership levels to password-protect your content.

You can use MemberPress to set up different rules so users can only access content based on their membership level. For more details, please see our guide on creating a WordPress membership site.

To start, you’ll first need to add memberships to your website. Simply go to MemberPress » Memberships from your WordPress dashboard and click the ‘Add New’ button.

After that, you can enter a name for your membership level, add a description, and set a price.

You can also change the billing type from one-time to recurring, as well as edit the membership to be lifetime or expire after a certain time period.

Don’t forget to click the ‘Publish’ button when you’re done.

Next, you can go to MemberPress » Rules from your WordPress dashboard and click the ‘Add New’ button.

From here, you can click the dropdown menu under the ‘Protected Content’ option.

MemberPress offers lots of options to protect your content, whether that is a single page or all of your WordPress pages. For this tutorial, we’ll password-protect a single page.

So, let’s choose the ‘A Single Page’ option from the dropdown menu and enter the title of the page.

Next, you’ll need to set up the Access Conditions and configure who can view the restricted page. MemberPress lets you protect content based on membership level, WordPress user role, capability, and individual members.

Let’s set ‘Membership’ to ‘Premium’ from the dropdown menus for this tutorial. This way, only premium members will be able to access the page. You can add more conditions and allow more than 1 membership level to view the page.

When you’re done, don’t forget to click the ‘Save Rule’ button.

You can then visit your website to see the password-protected page in action. Members will now have to sign in to their accounts to view the content of the page.

Want to do more?

You can set up passwords for your videos or offer group memberships for corporate teams. Additionally, you can create a password to give subscribers access to a paid newsletter and more.

We also have a guide on how to password-protect your forms in WordPress.

We hope this article helped you learn how to customize a password-protected page in WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on how to protect content in WordPress or our expert picks of the best WordPress content protection plugins.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.