Private Blogs And Your Visitor Log

There are known limitations, to the effectiveness of making a blog private.

The problem of access latency, where a blog made private won't block everybody immediately, is one. Another is the possibility of co workers of a legitimately designated reader being able to read a private blog, on an office network that uses a caching proxy server. But there are other perceived problems with private blogs, that don't actually exist.

One perceived problem is seen when examining the visitor log for a private blog. Some one without access permission, loading a private blog, will load the "Private Blog" interstitial warning on top of the requested page. The visitor log will show the page in question being loaded. But look closer - do you see any other pages being loaded?

A log from StatCounter is perfect for this task. For any visitor to your blog, you can see a record of each link clicked during the visit. For an uninvited visitor to a private blog, you'll likely see one click - the "Entry Page" - and that's it. And even if the "Entry Page" is listed in the visitor log, chances are that all that was actually seen was the interstitial page.

So if you're examining the visitor log for your private blog, relax. Your private content is, most likely, safe.