Managing Site Privacy and Media Files in Glow Blogs

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When changing privacy settings on a Glow Blogs site containing a large volume of media (photos, videos, audio), all media files must be moved across system directories. On sites with extensive media libraries, this file transfer can take significant time.

Important

Deleting media from your Media Library while a privacy change is in progress can cause the transfer process to get stuck, requiring manual intervention from developers.

We are planning a system update for Glow Blogs to prevent this issue. In the meantime, follow the guidelines below to ensure your site’s media moves smoothly and safely.

Best Practices for Updating Site Privacy

  • Delete unnecessary media first: If you plan to remove media and change site privacy, delete the media before changing privacy settings. This avoids transfer errors and significantly speeds up the process.
  • Wait for media transfers to finish: Do not edit or delete media until all files have finished moving.
  • Monitor progress in the Dashboard: Check the Dashboard settings page where privacy is configured. If a transfer is underway, a banner will state:

“Media is currently being moved to/from the public area, so Blog Visibility cannot be changed at the moment.”

Refresh your browser periodically and wait until this notice disappears before editing media.

  • Limit privacy changes: Adjust site-wide privacy settings as infrequently as possible.

Safer Alternatives for Hiding Specific Content

If you only need to hide a post or page while making edits, changing the privacy setting for your entire site is unnecessary and carries risk. Instead, use one of these simpler methods:

  1. Set status to Draft: Allows you to edit and preview the post or page without making it public.
  2. Set status to Pending Review: Keeps content hidden while waiting for approval.
  3. Password-protect the page: Restricts access to anyone without the password.

Tip: Bulk Editing Multiple Posts or Pages

If you only need to hide a post or page while making edits, changing the privacy setting for your entire site is unnecessary and carries risk. Instead, use one of these simpler methods:

  1. Navigate to Posts or Pages in the Dashboard.
  2. Click Screen Options at the top right of the screen.
  3. Change Number of items per page to 200 (the maximum limit) and click Apply.
  4. Select the check boxes for the posts or pages you want to edit.
  5. Choose Edit from the Bulk actions drop-down menu and click Apply. You can now edit up to 200 items simultaneously.

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