Under construction

How to build a site online without it being public?

[clausroxin]

I'm planning a new site. It will be a fairly complex one, and I'll be using a content management system (I'm yet to pick one, though...). Problem is that I want to test the system, design the site, upload content, etc. online, but I wouldn't want my work to be publicly accessible until it's completed.

So I'd like a "coming soon" or "under construction" page to appear while I'm working on the background.

What's the best way of doing this?

Thanks for your help.

[DelliTranswait]

I did something similar. I wanted to be able to see how the site looked on various computer systems (using Firefox at home, checking it in MSIE at work, and also in MSIE at the local library). I FTP'ed the files to the hosting service, but on the homepage I put up a banner (where an ad would normally be) that said something like "this website is not completely ready for visitors but you are welcome to have a look around if you'd like" -- it was that way for about a week until I got everything the basic way I wanted it. Then (and only then) I started sending out e-mails with the URL of my new site, posting it in chatrooms and blogs, etc.

[Nutter]

What I've done in the past was to upload it to a subdomain - test.domain.tld. Then, using httpd_conf or .htaccess (assuming Apache, I've never used IIS), I limit access to the subdomain to my ip address.

What I've done since is to add a string in to my FF browser string and use that string to determine if the visitor can get in or not.

You can also password protect the subdomain.

[Frequent]

Assuming your server is configured like most, it has a built in default list to serve as the home page. (index.html, home.html, index.php, etc.) I would simply put up an under construction page on the top default (usually index.html) and work on your site with index.php as the homepage. Someone typing in the plain domain would see the under construction page, but when you typed in the full url www.example.com/index.php you would have your actual home page. It should stop most type ins from finding the site as well as the search engines so long as you have no incoming links published using the full url.

Once you are done with development just delete the index.html and the server will start serving the index.php by default.

Freq---

[clausroxin]

Thanks for the advice, guys.

[TimmyMagic]

Of course you could just upload your files to a location such as:

www.widgets.com/test/index.htm

It works for me.

Tim

[Buzliteyear]

A different take on this.

With the Google sandbox and the efforts required to get a site indexed, with my last site I began with a fully functional index page. It contained just the most basic of information and only a couple of links to other site pages that also contained the most basic of information. I made sure that each page contained good and interesting information.

Also, there was a "Coming Soon" announcement to let those who found it know what they can expect.

I found that with only a few links to the site, I wasn't getting too many search engine hits, but I was able to serve my sandbox penance, so when the site was fully ready, I was ahead of the game.

I was still able to work on other pages, but at least I was able to get it going.

Of course, doing this will depend on what type of site you are designing.

Just a thought.

[Don_Hoagie]

I agree with and design as the last two posters have advised.

The way I like to design a site in the background is to upload everything I do to a subfolder, i.e.

www.example.com/notready/

Two benefits of this: 1)if you relatively link your files, like <img src="/example.jpg">, you can keep uploading or replacing files here and there, and your site will still have everything in place as you're testing it... all you have to do is go to /notready/index.html and you're at your main page. 2) If you're going to be showing your site to clients, or curious onlookers, or anyone else who you'd like to instantly be able to cut off from being able to see it, you just rename that "notready" folder to something else like "notready4321", and all those URLs you gave out to people are now invalid. I use this technique a lot, when I don't want nosy clients spying on the product and saying "hey, this new page you just made has the same text as the last page!"

And the sandbox thing is also an issue... it's not a good idea to simply put up a page with the digging construction worker .gif animation. Well, that's not a good idea at all, but especially for Google purposes. Put up something that informs the end-users and the SE's, but doesn't give away too much.

[Frequent]

I absolutely agree that there is no reason your "under construction" page can't have relevant information about the site you are building. I don't know if this really helps with the sandbox but it can't hurt.

Freq---

[outsourcedagain]

Would a "placeholder" site to serve the "sandbox penance" be appropriate for an eCommerce storefront? I might consider this, since I already have my domain name and know what my product will be. It would be tempting to even put some products and pricing out there, but on the flip side that might tip off the competition.

What do you all think?

[peco]

Please excuse my ignorance here, what is the sandbox?

[jfodale]

There's a great thread about the sandbox here:

[webmasterworld.com...]

Basically, the sandbox keeps new sites from appearing in Google search results for a certain undeterminable length of time. For example, my hobby page ranks #1 on Yahoo! and #2 on MSN for a certain keyword, but doesn't rank in even the top 200 for that same keyword on Google. Google spiders the crap out of my site on a nightly basis, I just don't appear in the search results.

Some people say they never get caught in the sandbox. Others say they always get caught in the sandbox. Your site could be playing in the sandbox for months, even years, it seems.

[harry_wales]

I always use the robots.txt file to stop engines from indexing anything I am working on. And if you want to keep the public from seeing anything too, you can always password protect the entire site directory.

Then when finished and ready to go live, you edit your robots.txt file to allow spiders to index those pages and directories you want indexed, and remove the password protection to let the public in.

Another method is to use the 301 redirect to seamlessly redirect all spiders and visitors to a "holding/under construction" page. Although personally I do not like "under construction" pages as they smack of amateurism.

Best to use the first method so that no one except yourself or those you trust can see anything until you are ready to go live.

[jdMorgan]

Yeah, but the point of the putting up a *relevant* placeholder home page is to give the spiders something to analyze while you're developing the reaminder of the content... If you are "sandboxed" then maybe Google won't rank the site for awhile, but in the meantime all search engines will have at least a little bit of content to use to figure out what your site is about.

Develop in a subdomain or a subdirectory -- it doesn't matter. But do password-protect your development area or control access by IP or unique user-agent as noted above. If you don't actively protect the development area (i.e. using access control versus "security by obscurity"), then you can expect that it will be exposed and at least some of it it will get listed in the SERPs even if you use robots.txt. That's because the major search engines have gotten in the habit of listing any URL they can find, regardless of whether they are allowed to fetch that URL and get the page. A link in a blog or someone using the Google toolbar while you show them the site might be enough to open the doors you want to keep shut. The "new domain" detection 'bots will visit and list you on their sites. The "WHOIS" info scrapers will show up -- the crowd that shows up at the doors of a new domain can be surprisingly large.

There's no quarter offered just because your domain is new and your real content is in an odd location relative to root. Actively protect it.

Alternately, install a server on an old PC, and use that for your dev machine... If it's on your LAN and firewalled behind a router, then the world can't get to it.

Jim