For some reason either WordPress or Fantastico have decided to change the default privacy setting in WordPress back to “Block search engines”. I have no idea why they would do this as it doesn’t make much sense to block the search engines from indexing your blog. This seems to only affect installations of 3.0.3 of WordPress done via Fantastico.

To check your WP privacy setting – log into your Dashboard and scroll down the page until you see the Settings link on the left-hand side. Click on the little down arrow next to Settings so it opens that panel. Click on Privacy and make sure the “I would like my site to be visible to everyone, including search engines (like Google, Bing, Technorati) and archivers ” option is selected.

Hopefully they change the default back as it would be a real shame to spend hours and hours promoting your site only to find that it can’t get indexed anyway. Let me know what you think below.

Ta
Kristy