Launching a WordPress site is pretty simple. You just need a domain name and hosting to take your site online. But what if you’re not ready to launch the site yet?
You may need more time to work on the design, pages, and content, or to test functionality during initial site creation before launching.
This is why learning to hide WordPress sites from search engines and users is essential before going live. While working on the backend, you can restrict public access to WordPress sites.
The process is simple. In today’s guide, I will show you how to hide your WordPress blog from users while you edit and make it accessible only to you or those with permission.
To achieve this, we need a WordPress plugin called SeedProd. You can use other relevant plugins, but SeedProd is the most intuitive, versatile, customizable, and beginner-friendly option.
Why the SeedProd Plugin?
You may wonder why I opted for SeedProd, among other plugins, to make WordPress blogs private.
SeedProd offers more than just the ability to take your WordPress site offline.
First, SeedProd is a WordPress theme and page builder plugin. With it, you can build a complete custom WordPress site. You can create templates and design unique pages, footers, headers, sidebars and more.
It includes hundreds of professionally built templates for different digital marketing industries. The templates allow you to create beautiful landing pages, sales pages, opt-in pages, website designs, eCommerce pages, etc.
Creating a customized 404, coming soon, under construction, or maintenance mode page is one of SeedProd’s core features. This tutorial will focus on the Coming Soon or Maintenance mode options in SeedProd.
The module you select depends on what you want and how you want search engines to handle indexing your site while it is restricted from public access.
Your Coming Soon page will be available to search engines unless you set the site to not index. If you choose the Maintenance Mode option, the page will signal that it’s unavailable.
However, these options shouldn’t bother you, since search engines will crawl and index your site when you remove private access and make it publicly accessible.
For this tutorial, let’s use Coming Soon mode. This is a good option because we are about to launch a new site.
The rest of this article explains how to hide your WordPress site while editing until you’re ready to launch it.
Build Your WordPress Site
First, you must build your WordPress site because you will install the SeedProd plugin on a regular WordPress site.
Register your domain name and set up hosting. I recommend Namecheap for your domain name and Cloudways or Pressable hosting.
On a good day, you can register a domain name with Namecheap for less than $10. You also get a free WHOIS guide, which hides your domain name’s administrative contact details from the public.
Next, you must buy a hosting plan from Pressable or Cloudways. Both are excellent web hosts for WordPress websites.
Pressable offers a more affordable, WordPress-focused hosting environment. Its features enhance and optimize your website experience to deliver fast, secure, high-performance WordPress and WooCommerce pages.
Cloudways is geared towards advanced users who need blazing-fast WordPress pages, a managed hosting experience, and advanced, scalable hosting solutions.
Its key features include an integrated Cloudflare enterprise CDN, automated malware scanning and removal, free Object Cache Pro, Safe Updates, Varnish, a free cache plugin, a pay-as-you-go plan, and more.
You can find all its hosting features on the Cloudways website.
Once your hosting and domain name are ready, installing the SeedProd plugin is next.
Install SeedProd Plugin
You can download the plugin in a zip file from the official SeedProd website and upload it to your blog. Alternatively, you can install and activate the plugin via your WordPress admin plugin page.
However, we don’t need the Pro version of the plugin to hide our WordPress blog from users until it’s ready.
The free version gives you access to Coming Soon mode, which we will use to block users from accessing the live version of your website.
As a free SeedProd user, you don’t need a license to activate the plugin, but it offers limited functionality and features. You need to upgrade and subscribe to a license if you want access to:
Activate Coming Soon Page Mode.
Next, go to SeedProd in your WordPress dashboard and click Landing Pages from the menu. Click “Set up Coming Soon page mode.
The free license gives you access to three Coming Soon Page templates: Blank, Simple, and Rocket. For more beautiful designs, you must purchase a paid license.
Choose the Rocket template unless you’re comfortable with page builders and have web design knowledge; the blank templates are ideal. Rocket templates offer more than basic design and more customization capabilities. It also provides a solid foundation for quickly building your Coming Soon page.
Here is the Rocket Coming Soon page template design. You can customize its appearance using different block sections, such as video, image, text, button, divider, space, payment gateway, web form, etc.
Let’s walk through the settings page before diving into the appearance customization.
Customize Your Page
The first thing you’d want to do when customizing the SeedProd Coming Soon page is to go to the Page Settings tab. This tab contains options for SEO optimization, changing publish status, adding affiliate links, enabling redirects, uploading favicons, meta descriptions, and more.
There are four sections to review in the Page Settings tab:
General
Enter the title here if you want to write a headline for your Coming Soon page. The General setting lets you set the page publish status and add your SeedProd affiliate link.
You can also choose to enable/disable the Powered by SeedProd link.
Enable isolation mode, which prevents two WordPress hooks from running the wp_head and wp_footer scripts on the page.
If you want to redirect users to another page, you can enter the URL in the appropriate field; SeedProd sets a temporary 302 redirection mode to the URL.
Lastly, if you need to change the current Coming Soon page templates, you can click an option to return to the templates page.
Access Control
This pro feature lets you control user access to your Coming Soon page and define where it should be enabled on the website.
For instance, you can enable the Coming Soon page on the homepage rather than the entire site. Access control, with the exclude/include options, lets you achieve that.
SeedProd excludes WordPress URLs with terms like login, dashboard, and admin from Coming Soon page mode. This lets users with admin privileges access the backend.
If you want the user role to see the Coming Soon page, you can exclude specific URLs from this directive.
Still, in the Access Control setting, you can set a bypass for specific internet cookies instead of WordPress user roles. SeedProd also lets you set a bypass URL, which you can give to your user or client so they can access the website without seeing the Coming Soon page.
This is a good feature for freelancers or agencies. It lets you give clients temporary access to the progress made so far.
Another excellent feature here is the bypass URL by IP address. This option allows users from a specific IP address to see the regular site instead of the Coming Soon Page.
However, the Access Control features and settings require a paid SeedProd license.
SEO
Next is the SEO options.
The SEO option lets you write different titles, such as the SEO title that appears in SERPs and your meta description.
This is where you also upload the favicon, set social media thumbnail images, and choose whether to set the site to noindex.
Script
Add a footer, body, and header script to your site.
However, I recommend that you don’t add Google Analytics code here unless you intend to keep the SeedProd plugin active on your site for the long term.
Other ways to add Google Analytics to your site include using the Google Site Kit plugin or theme header/footer script options. These options are safer and more suitable than using a page builder.
Once you’ve completed these settings, return to the SeedProd Design tab.
You’ll notice two tabs under the Design tab: Blocks and Sections.
As a free user, you can only access the Blocks tab content, which allows you to drag and drop design elements onto the editor’s main page to customize your Coming Soon page.
Several blocks allow you to customize your page. You can host a giveaway on your Coming Soon page by installing the free RafflePress plugin and using the RafflePress block.
Other options include WooCommerce, a payment system (Stripe), Easy Digital Download, widgets, and social media blocks.
Each block has its own settings, which you can access by clicking the block. For example, to customize or edit the bullet list content in the image below, I click it to open the settings panel.
As you can see, there are several controls and customizations to make.
On the left are options to customize the active elements, while the right panel shows the navigation layout. The navigation layout lets you select an element on the page to edit without clicking on it directly.
The footer navigation lets you access controls such as redo, undo, layout navigation, global settings, revision history, and tablet view.
You can customize your Coming Soon Page however you like. You have all the essential tools and features to create a beautiful landing page and hide your WordPress site while you edit it in the backend.
Once you finish customizing, go back to the Page Settings tab and enable the Publish button.
SeedProd sets the Coming Soon page status to draft by default. Once you complete the customization, change it to published.
Other Settings
SeedProd has many fantastic settings that are locked behind a paid license. In this tutorial, we’ll walk through a few.
You may notice I skipped the Connect tab in the image above. This is because it has pro features.
The Connect tab lists email marketing service integrations. You can connect your Coming Soon Page to your email service provider and collect leads for your list.
SeedProd integrates with various email marketing solutions such as GetResponse, ActiveCampaign, Constant Contact, MailerLite, Drip, ConvertKit, MailChimp, Sendinblue, etc. You can also connect via Zapier if your email marketing or CRM isn’t on the list.
Another paid SeedProd feature is Section templates. I briefly mentioned it above but didn’t go into more detail.
Section templates let you add pre-designed website sections like header, footer, hero image, text, columns, call to action, FAQs, and testimonials to your Coming Soon Page.
Go to the Design tab and switch to Sections.
Activate Your Coming Soon Page
To activate the Coming Soon Page on your site, click the close (X) button on the editor page.
This will prompt a pop-up box.
Click the Yes, Activate button in the notice box. Users visiting your website will now see your customized Coming Soon page, except those you have given bypass access to the site through settings.
Note: Once the Coming Soon page is active, you should log out of your site to view it or log in to the browser in incognito mode.
Best Practices for Hiding a WordPress Site
1. Choose the Right Method for Your Needs
If you only want to hide certain pages or posts, use WordPress’s built-in visibility settings (set pages to “Private” or “Password Protected”). You will find this setting when you click the Publish button in WordPress.
Check the image below for more details.
For a full-site solution, consider plugins like SeedProd or WP Maintenance Mode, which offer features like custom “coming soon” pages and maintenance modes.
SeedProd is more advanced and offers other benefits and features, such as a theme and page builder, a drag-and-drop editor, readymade templates, section templates, email, and WooCommerce integrations.
For more advanced control over keeping your site private, you can use IP-based restrictions in your .htaccess file to limit access to specific users (e.g., for internal testing). Consider this option if you’re comfortable editing website files and can handle coding efficiently.
2. Discourage Search Engines from Indexing the Site
If you don’t want all pages and posts from your site showing up in search engines, this option is worth trying. It is suitable for making the entire WordPress site no-index.
Go to Settings > Reading in your WordPress dashboard and check “Discourage search engines from indexing this site.” This will help prevent your site pages from appearing in search results, although it’s not foolproof.
Search engines may honor or ignore the noindex directive, so check your pages in Google several times after enabling the option.
Use the site search operator to investigate if pages from your site are indexed.
3. Set Up a Professional “Coming Soon” Page.
A well-designed “Coming Soon” page can inform visitors, build anticipation, and even capture leads with a sign-up form if your site is under development or under construction. Many plugins allow you to customize this page to reflect your brand.
This post covers SeedProd. It is the most versatile and customizable WordPress plugin for hiding website pages.
It has built-in web form functionality to collect email list subscribers on your Coming Soon landing pages.
4. Use Strong Password Protection for Private Testing
If specific users or clients review the site, or you need feedback on your designs, you can use password protection to control access.
You can set different passwords for different roles or individuals if needed.
Alternatively, you can use SeedProd URL bypass options to give specific user roles access to your site instead of generating passwords.
5. Regularly Monitor for Indexing and Access Issues
Even with these measures in place, search engines might index certain pages.
Use Google Search Console to check indexing status, and periodically test the site in a logged-out browser to confirm it’s hidden.
When to Make Your WordPress Site Public
1. Complete Core Functionality and Content
You should only make your site public once all essential functions, such as navigational menus, contact forms, important pages, and core content, are complete.
An incomplete or broken site can harm user experience and reputation, leading to lost revenue and readers.
2. Optimize for SEO and Test Responsiveness
Before launching, ensure the site is optimized for SEO (meta tags, image optimization, etc.) and test it across different devices and browsers to guarantee responsiveness.
3. Review for Errors and Perform Security Checks
Fix any 404 errors, set up a security plugin, and test links to ensure no broken links or insecure content.
A secure, polished experience builds trust with new visitors.
4. Set Up Analytics and Search Console
Configure Google Analytics and submit your sitemap to Google Search Console to track site performance from day one.
These tools will help you monitor traffic and address any indexing issues.
5. Launch with a Marketing Plan
To maximize your launch, consider a marketing plan that includes email campaigns, social media posts, or paid ads to attract visitors.
These steps will help you maintain a seamless and professional experience from development to launch.
FAQs
How do I hide my WordPress site from search engines?
To prevent search engines from indexing your site, go to Settings > Reading in your WordPress dashboard and check the box that says “Discourage search engines from indexing this site.” This setting tells search engines not to crawl and index your site, although it doesn’t guarantee complete privacy, as some search engines might still index the site.
What is a “Coming Soon” or “Maintenance Mode” page, and why should I use it?
A “Coming Soon” page is a placeholder you can display to visitors while your website is under development. It lets visitors know the site is launching soon and often lets you collect leads or provide an ETA. “Maintenance Mode” is similar but typically used when a site is temporarily offline for updates. Both options are available through plugins like SeedProd and WP Maintenance Mode, which offer customizable pages to create a polished look while the site is hidden.
How can I password-protect my WordPress site?
You can password-protect your site using plugins like Password Protected or PPWP Pro. These plugins let you set a single password or create role-specific access. Alternatively, WordPress has a built-in feature for individual pages. Go to any page or post’s settings and set the visibility to “Password Protected.” This option is handy for limiting access to only specific users without hiding the entire site.
Can I make individual pages or posts private instead of hiding the entire site?
Yes, WordPress offers visibility options for individual pages and posts. You can set them to Private, making them accessible only to admins and editors, or Password Protected, allowing access only to those with the correct password. This is an excellent option for keeping certain content hidden while the rest of your site remains visible to the public.
What are the best plugins for hiding my WordPress site?
Some popular plugins for hiding your WordPress site include SeedProd, WP Maintenance Mode, and Password Protected. SeedProd is highly customizable and ideal for creating “Coming Soon” pages, while WP Maintenance Mode offers similar features for temporary offline updates. Password Protected is a simpler option that lets you add a password for site-wide protection.
How do I restrict access to my site by IP address?
For more advanced control, you can restrict access to your site based on IP addresses by adding code to the .htaccess file. For example, adding deny from all with allow from [your IP address] only grants access to specific users. This method works well for Apache servers but may require adjustments for other server types.
Will search engines still index my site if I use a plugin to hide it?
Many maintenance or “coming soon” plug-ins automatically set the site as “noindex,” which tells search engines not to index it. However, it’s also good practice to manually check the “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” box in Settings > Reading to add an extra layer of protection.
Conclusion
SeedProd is the best plugin for hiding WordPress sites without complex setups or code.
It’s beginner-friendly and versatile. It offers a drag-and-drop page editor and lets you customize every part of your landing page effortlessly.
Your landing page can be used to add web forms, showcase promotional offers, integrate a payment system, and do many other things.
Whether you’re an agency, freelancer, small business, or individual looking to revamp your site, SeedProd offers everything you need to build a robust website design that impresses your audience.
