Hidden developing site

[aw.be]

Hello everyone.

I've only ever developed static sites and then easily moved them to the client's server.

But, I am developing a client site with PW and am not sure the best way to go about doing this.

The only page on their site right now is a static splash type page. However, I'd like to install and then develop on their server without the site being visible. When everything is ready, I'd like to do the switchover.

Any advice on how to do this easily?

Thanks.

Aaron

[diogo]

i usually put this on the top of my home template:

if($user->name == "guest"){
//code for temporary site
}else{
//normal home template
}

like this, only logged users can see the developing homepage

[arjen]

You could build one template with the current site and point all access to that page using the excellent plug-in by pete called Maintenance Mode.

[Pete]

You could build one template with the current site and point all access to that page using the excellent plug-in by pete called Maintenance Mode.

That idea never occurred to me, so +1 for thinking outside the box

[aw.be]

Thanks everyone. Haven't looked at the plugin yet, but is it straight forward to point all access to a page?

And just to confirm that I could have all files in the root - then I'd just need to maintain 2 sets of css files for the time being, correct? (1 for current site, 1 for new site)

Aaron

[Pete]

Yep - basically you would install that module (really easy, just drop the file into the site/modules directory, login to the PW admin and install it) and one of the settings for it allows you to point non-logged-in users to any page on your site.

What arjen is suggesting is to then create a page and a new template with your current content and tell the module to direct any non-logged-in users directly to that page.

This way, you can go to yoursite.com/processwire and log in and get access to the whole site, whilst everyone else only sees that page. That way you also don't have the headache of your one page being index.html and ProcessWire's index.php conflicting with each other, which is quite likely going to cause you issues.

[aw.be]

Pete - I understand.

Great solution. And thanks to everyone for the very fast and informative responses.

Aaron