Well, you can’t really HIDE a website, but you can redirect users to a safe page that’s away from your work-in-progress. The Members Only Wordpress plugin can help. This plugin redirects unregistered users to the log-in page -OR- to any page you choose.
At LowStart.com, I’ve chosen to redirect users to a “Coming Soon” page and THAT page has a Newsletter Signup form. There’s no sense in re-directing users to a login page they’ll never be able to use, so in creating this page, users will get a taste of what you’re creating and opt-in their email address to be notified when the site is ready to go live.
You DO have to create new header, footer, and page tempate for the task. I’ve taken mine, made copies of them, and then removed all the content and links, oh and removed the sidebar and modified the style of the content page to use 100% of the width…
Now, user’s can at least see what the site is shapping up to be without tripping over code that’s in development and might not be safe to run…
Leave a Reply