When revising or creating content for your website, you should protect it from public access. In other words, instead of showing an incomplete website, you should let your visitors know that you are working on the website and that it will be ready soon.
Hiding your website is easy to do – if you know how. In this post, we’ll show you 3 ways to keep prying eyes away off your website while it’s under development:
1. Activate maintenance mode
Instead of showing the audience an incomplete website, you can activate maintenance mode to give a user-friendly indication that the website is still under development.
By activating maintenance mode, you can show your visitors a WordPress Coming Soon page. This page is a good idea in most cases:
- It shows visitors that the website is not yet available.
- The Coming Soon page can include a countdown timer for when the website will be live.
- You can also ask your visitors to sign up via email to receive an update when the site officially goes live.
- In addition, you can show and introduce your social media channels to visitors.
Overall, this offers your visitors more benefits than if they simply leave the website without taking any action.
Among hundreds of existing plugins, these are the 5 best “Coming Soon” and maintenance plugins for your WordPress website. While they all have the same main function, they each offer different options:
- Coming Soon Page & Maintenance Mode by SeedProd – This plugin works with any WordPress theme. The “Coming Soon” page is properly optimized with customizable meta tags.
- Minimal Coming Soon & Maintenance Mode – This extremely basic plugin built by WebFactory lets search engines view the normal website while the visitors see the coming soon page only.
- The Coming Soon & Maintenance plugin – Developed by Niteo Themes, this plugin supports the selection of layouts, the selection of custom logos and the setting of background graphics. It also allows you to search for images in Unsplash Stock within the plugin.
Between these plugins, you should be able to find a good one that you can use to install a coming soon page on your website.
2. Password protection
Password protection is another way to keep your under development WordPress secure from website visitors, only allowing people with the right password to access the website.
There are 2 ways to password protect your WordPress site under development: with the cPanel tool for password protected directories, and with password protection plugins.
cPanel’s password protected directories tool
CPanel is one of the most popular control panels for web hosting accounts and provides convenient management for your website.
To enable password protection for directories and subdirectories, click on the Password Protected Directories folder under the Security section in cPanel. Then add a password to protect a directory.
If your visitors want to view the website, they must enter a correct username and password in the pop-up login form.
In addition, all subdirectories of the protected directory are publicly accessible once they are authenticated.
Password protection plugins
Similar to cPanel’s password-protected tool, password-protected WordPress plugins also require a password to access development sites. These plugins are easier and more straightforward to use in your WordPress dashboard. Plus, users don’t need a username to log in.
Some password protection plugins, such as Password Protect WordPress Pro, offer advanced features. For example, administrators and other roles such as editors and authors can access the website directly without having to enter the password.
You can protect the entire WordPress website with passwords and set the whitelist role to admin users.
As a result, the plugin blocks all IP addresses that try to open your website under construction, with the exception of administrators. These users can view private content without having to enter passwords. Others must enter the password from to view the content.
To use the PPWP Pro plugin to grant administrators direct access to your underdeveloped website:
Start by downloading the PPWP Pro plugin. Then, go to Plugins and select Add New in your WordPress dashboard.
Click on Upload plugin and select the downloaded zip file.
After this, install and activate the plugin. Then, go to the plugin settings page and select the Admin users option in the Whitelisted Roles drop-down menu.
Finally, visit the Sitewide tab and activate the Password Protect Entire Site option Enter your passwords, and click on Save changes.
This is the most secure way for you to hide your WordPress website from search engines and other visitors whilst it’s under development.
3. Block everyone except your IP addresses (Manual)
A final option is blocking all IP addresses except your own to prevent access to your WordPress website under development directly.
You can do this by changing the .htaccess file. This is a configuration file used by Apache-based web servers to control the directory in which they “live” and all subdirectories below this directory.
To set up IP restrictions, open the .htaccess file in the root directory of your website and add the following lines:
order allow,deny
deny from all
allow from aa.bb.cc.ddThe second line instructs the web server to block visitors from all IP addresses, while the last line specifies which IP addresses are allowed to access your website. Replace aa.bb.cc.dd with your IP addresses and save the file.
Conclusion
It’s a good idea to protect your WordPress website from unwanted visitors during development.
You can either show a “Coming Soon” page and ask your visitors to come back later, protect them with a password plugin, or block all IP addresses except your own. These methods prove useful in different circumstances, so be sure you choose the most effective method for your own website.
