Actually wordpress gives you the option at the time of install. Sounds like this user missed the option.

The option iis hardcoded to 1 in the install as can be seen in this line:-

add_option('blog_public', '1');

(of course it is posible you can set it during install so sunny is most likely correct).

blog_public is the option in question and 1 is the setting to make it public.

I would check the options anyway cause the block really works!!!

If you visit the codex and look at the installation screen, you can see that the checkbox for this option is set to YES by default. So this guy is wrong in that fresh installations of WordPress are set to block search engines by default.

I never knew that, is that for wordpress hosted sites only or is does that include all the downloaded blog scripts that we install and host on our own sites?

I would like to know as I have 3 wordpress blogs hosted on our own servers.

This will work against those who are not familiar with search engines and SEO stuff. I wonder why Wordpress makers had to do that.

Before anyone gets the wrong idea about WordPress, it's important to understand that it's Open Source GNU software. Basically, it means that anyone can alter what its set to do by default.

For a fresh install from a clean package downloaded from wordpress.org, search engines are not blocked by default. You are given the option during the installation and, in fact, you would need to actually select the option to block search engines.

When using an outside service to install WordPress, it may not be a clean and default installation. For instance, 1 and 1 customizes their WordPress 1-click install, as does Dreamhost. So, that's something to bear in mind.

Before assuming it's the software or script producing the behaviour, do a little legwork to find out for sure. Especially in the cases of Open Source GNU scripts which can freely be altered.

~ Teli

Been a known issue for quite sometime. Like 2 months now.

ever heard of SEO plugins

Thanks for pointing this out - I caught the same setting issue on 4 blogs we manage for clients. My own were fine, but these were setup by someone else, so not sure if it was by default or modified before I took over management of them for clients.

Whatever the case, it sure was busting my butt that I couldn't get these blogs to push in rankings, despite other SEO plugins, etc. Nice catch!

I remember when I was setting up my blog in November that I had to change the default radio button to allow the search engines. A friend of mine who had a blog helped me set up mine. So glad I noticed the default was not allowing search engines and mentioned it to her.

Always a good idea to pay attention to the details. And nice someone brought it up for those who didn't notice it. Teli's post is right on. Listen up, peeps.