All players have to be approved by the host to join a game. If you label the game as private, most people will respect your desires. You can also manually add players to a game. Thus, if you have a list of the players that you want to play with, you can simply add them after you create the game, then close it to new signups. I don't think there is a way to hide the game info page, but news and forums and such are hidden from the public by default. You can also set PBW to only display your email address to people in the same game as you, for additional privacy.
If you are interested in learning about LAN/WAN server maintenance and setup, there is no better way than to learn how to develop server applications for yourself.
Re: Email from SE 4 when new turns are ready?
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