I’ve been using these two plugins for a little while, and they seem to generate interest in people when I mention them, so I have decided to release them and see what happens.
The first plugin, Auth Only, allows only logged-in users to access your blog. It also allows you to customize your login page by adding a login.php template to your theme. Using a login template will allow you to create a customized experience for your registered users.
You will need to use a plugin like the Role Manager to edit the capabilities of roles to grant view_site capability to whichever users or Roles should have permission to view your site.
The second plugin, Kill Preview, removes the preview frame from the Write Post page in the WordPress admin. Why is this useful? Well, if your site layout is particularly involved, you might not want to load the preview when you edit a post because it could cause delays in editing. Kill Preview prevents that frame from loading, speeding up your editing.
If you really need to see the preview, Kill Preview changes the Preview link on the Write page so that it opens the preview display in a new window. This will let you preview what your post looks like on demand, rather than loading it with every page edit.
I have a few other plugins that I use for myself that I haven’t released for one reason or another. Perhaps I will consider releasing a few more of these if people find them handy.
