What is Restrict.io? Restrict.io is a WordPress content restriction plugin. It locks posts, pages, categories and partial content, and lets you sell access through WooCommerce, WooCommerce Subscriptions, Easy Digital Downloads, Tickera and Venuera. It does not include its own payment processor or membership-level manager.
Your WordPress RSS feed can quietly undo your content restrictions: even when a post is locked on your site, its content or excerpt may still be listed in the feed for anyone with a feed reader. With Restrict for WordPress and a small free add-on, you can hide restricted content from RSS feed output entirely. This guide shows you where to get the add-on, how to enable the option, and what its current limitations are.
Why your RSS feed matters
WordPress automatically generates an RSS feed for your site (usually at yoursite.com/feed), and feed readers, aggregators and other services can subscribe to it without ever visiting your pages. That means restricted posts can show up there – titles, excerpts or even full content – completely bypassing the restriction messages visitors would normally see on your website.
If you run a membership site, sell courses or publish premium posts, that is a leak worth closing. Hiding restricted posts from the feed keeps your public feed useful for everyone while your protected content stays protected everywhere.
Prerequisites
- Restrict for WordPress installed and activated, with restrictions applied to some of your posts.
- The free Hide RSS add-on, which you can download here.
How to hide restricted content from RSS feed output
- Download the add-on ZIP file using the link above.
- Install and activate it on your website the same way as any other WordPress plugin (upload the ZIP under Plugins → Add New).
- Head to Restrict Settings → General tab – you will notice a new option, as shown in the screenshot below.
- Set the option to YES and save your settings.
With the option set to YES, all posts that have any restriction set will be hidden from the RSS feed. In other words, only the posts that are set to be visible to Everyone will be listed in your feed.
Current limitations
For now, this feature does not work for globally protected categories and post types, because that functionality would be very "expensive" for any server to run on every feed request.
Practically, this means a post is excluded from the feed when a restriction is set on the post itself. If feed privacy is critical for content you currently protect only through global category restrictions or post type rules, consider also setting the restriction on those individual posts.
Tips
- Verify the result. After enabling the option, open
yoursite.com/feedin your browser (or refresh your feed reader) and confirm that restricted posts no longer appear. - Clear your cache. Feeds are often cached by caching plugins or your host. If restricted posts still show up, clear the cache and check again.
- This complements on-site restriction. Hiding posts from the feed does not replace restricting the posts themselves – it simply closes the RSS side door. Keep your normal page and post restrictions in place.
- Think about search engines separately. If you want protected content hidden from visitors but still indexed by Google, see our guide on whitelisting SEO bots and web crawlers.
Frequently asked questions
Will hiding posts from the feed hurt my SEO?
No. Your RSS feed is not what search engines rank – your actual pages are. If your goal is to keep restricted pages indexed by Google while remaining locked for visitors, that is handled by a separate Restrict feature described in the bots and web crawlers whitelisting guide. The two features work well together: bots see your content in search, while feed readers never receive restricted posts.
What about restricted pages?
The standard WordPress feed lists posts, not pages, so restricted pages are not exposed through the main RSS feed in the first place. The add-on focuses on posts precisely because those are what the feed publishes.