when my site is under construction how do I block people from getting into it?

[yaniv]

I put up a new site using wordpress and want it to stay hidden till I finish

[Eriksrocks]

How about putting it in a password-protected directory? :)

Security > Password Protected Directories

[BearState]

I put up a new site using wordpress and want it to stay hidden till I finish
From what I can tell, it's when your site is new and has no users that it is safest.

Why? Well, I might be wrong about this, but ... Because hackers, unable to plug logins with scripts because of captchas, go another route and try to plug away at session IDs. If you have 10000 people logged in, it makes it easier for them, because it increases their odds of matching an active session ID with a script. Keep in mind that the session ID most interesting to them will be 'admin' for plug-in packages.

So if your site is fairly new, just stick your stuff in a subdirectory and make your index file paint an 'Under Construction Message'.

If it were me though, I would do my dev work on a staging server and install later on BH, even if it were a partial or prototype install.