If your blog isn't quite ready to face the world, what do you do? You might be working on content, you might be reworking your theme, but the fact is that for most of us, WordPress is an online application, and visible to other eyes, even when we're not ready for them to look. Here's a simple way to make sure that you're the only one who can see your blog until you're ready to share it with the world.

You will need: the WP Holding Page theme; the Theme Test Drive plugin, and of course a WP install.

Install and activate the above. Basically, we're going to use the theme to show everyone else a holding page, and the plugin to ensure that signed-in admins can see the new theme and content we're working on.

Change the WPHP options to show the holding page messages you want. The nice thing about this "theme" is that it doesn't show ANY WP posts, so if you're working on content, you can publish it and see what it looks like without anyone else being able to see it.

Now we need to make sure that you can see the "real" theme. From the dashboard, go to Appearance > Theme Test Drive Options, select the theme you want from the drop down menu and click "enable theme drive". From this point, you'll be able to see the theme you just picked, but anyone else just surfing in on your blog will see the holding page.

When you're happy your blog is ready to face the world, then click "disable theme drive" on the TTD Options page, enable the theme you really want to use from Appearance > Themes, and you're done.

Tags: holding page

Posted by Sue on November 27, 2009 in Blogging, Plugins, Themes, WordPress.