I resolved my issue. User error. I was activating the plugins, but was not going to the plugin settings to enable the privacy features.
I'm a relative novice to WordPress. I just installed it (Wordpress.org) and will begin using it to build my site. In the meantime, I would like to prevent visitors to my domain from seeing my content as I build my pages. In the Settings-->Reading section, I have discouraged search engines from indexing my site. But visitors to my URL can still see all the default content that was uploaded during the WordPress install (e.g. the WordPress starting theme, first post, and sample page). I tried installing plugins to do this, but the none of the three I tried (Absolute Privacy, Simple Privacy, and More Privacy Options) appeared to work. Am I going about this the correct way?
Thanks in advance.

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