How-To - Modify Wordpress roles to allow see private posts

Recently I’ve been working on a small project which uses wordpress to serve a static website.

The website, have some pages with a lot of information and now I need to take advatange of the wordpress blog functionality.

The main topic is that I need that blog to be private, this mean that only logged in users should be able to see the “Posts” section.

By default, Wordpress allow private posts/pages to be seen just by Administrator & Editor roles but I need this also for Subscriber & Contributor roles.

In order to achieve that functionality, I’ve added the following code to functions.php file:

//Allow work with private pages
$subRole = get_role( 'subscriber' );
    $subRole->add_cap( 'read_private_posts' );
$subRole = get_role( 'contributor' );
    $subRole->add_cap( 'read_private_posts' );

// Redirect subscribers to home page on login
function loginRedirect( $redirect_to, $request_redirect_to, $user ) {
    if ( is_a( $user, 'WP_User' ) && $user->has_cap( 'edit_posts' )
    === false ) {
        return get_bloginfo( 'siteurl' );
    }
    return $redirect_to; 
}
add_filter( 'login_redirect', 'loginRedirect', 10, 3 );

Now both Subscriber & Contributor roles will be able to see pages and posts tagged as “Private”.

Also, as I need a completely private blog section, I need a private page to be used on main wordpress menu.

By default, Wordpress doesn’t show private pages on menu pages selector so the following code has been added to functions.php file to show private pages:

function steele_show_private_pages_menu_selection( $args ){
    if( $args->name == 'page' ) {
        $args->_default_query['post_status'] = array('publish','private');
    }
    return $args;
}
add_filter( 'nav_menu_meta_box_object','steele_show_private_pages_menu_selection', 9999 );

Now you should have available private pages on menu selector.

Hope this helps anyone to configure a Wordpress blog using private posts and pages.