How do I make my WordPress site invisible?
To make your WordPress site invisible while you’re building it and ensure security, you can follow these steps:
- Use Maintenance Mode or Under Construction Page:
- Consider installing a maintenance plugin from the WordPress plugin directory.
- Activate this plugin to display a placeholder page to visitors while you work on your site.
- This allows you to build and customize your website privately without revealing it to the public.
- Enable a “Noindex” Setting:
- While you’re in the development phase, it’s a good practice to prevent search engines from indexing your site.
- You can achieve this by going to your WordPress Dashboard.
- Navigate to Settings > Reading and select “Discourage search engines from indexing this site.”
- This setting will add a “noindex” tag to your site, instructing search engines not to crawl and index your content.
- Use Hide My WP Ghost plugin for security while building the website:
- Access the “Hide My WP > Change Paths” panel and select either the Safe Mode or Ghost Mode level.
- In the input fields that appear, customize the common WordPress paths to hide them. If unsure, use the default paths provided by Hide My WP Ghost. Ensure that each path has a different name to maintain site functionality and avoid conflicts with plugins that may not support varied ajax and admin paths.
- After setting new paths for wp-content, wp-includes, uploads, author, etc., save your settings. If the config file is not writable, follow the instructions provided by Hide My WP Ghost to add rules manually.
By following these steps, you can build your WordPress website privately, ensure security while it’s in development, and prevent it from being indexed by search engines until you’re ready to make it public.