Putting a site live but keeping it private till it's ready?

[galvin]

Is there an easy way to have a site live, but only have it visible to me.  In other words, I'll be building the site while it's live and don't want anyone going to it accidentally until it's ready.

 

Before everyone jumps down my throat , I know all developing/testing should be done locally, but I'm just curious if there is an easy way to keep a site private if it must be developed while live.

 

I guess making a simple login would do it.  But then I'd have to have code on every page that says "if not logged in, don't allow to see this page".  I guess i could put that code in a header include file to avoid having to add it to every page manually.

 

Ok, sorry for that, but I think I just talked myself into how to do it.

 

But I'm going to post the question anyway in case there is a better/smarter way.

 

Thanks everyone!

[ManiacDan]

Don't tell anyone where it is and don't point a domain name to it.

 

Also, configure apache to do authentication, then you can secure the whole webserver.  You can remove that one apache directive the day you want to go live.

 

-Dan

[MarPlo]

Hi,

You can create a .htaccess file having this code:

order allow,deny
deny from all
allow from your_ip

- replace "your_ip" wityh youur IP.

[galvin]

Thanks both of you!  MarPlo, I did what you said and it blocked me from getting there (which is what I wanted).  Then I added my IP address per your instructions, yet I still can't access it from that IP.  I added...

 

 
order allow,deny
deny from all
allow from XXX.XXX.XX.X

 

(with the X's being my actual IP of course).

 

So just curious if you know of anything that might prevent this from working as intended?

 

[galvin]

Figured it out, had to reverse the order of allow,deny in the first line to say "deny,allow" instead.  Works now. Thanks!