Need to hide (not display) homepage

[pinkme]

How do "hide" my homepage from the public? I would like to make some changes to the website/db before publicly displaying it. Please provide my the steps to do this in my bluehost control panel.

thanks.

[Pethens]

There are a couple different methods you could use to hide your home page. If your homepage is named index.html, for example, rename it to index_new.html; then create a new index.html page that just says something like "New homepage coming soon".

Another way if you don't mind hiding your whole site is to password protect the folder that contains your home page. Go to the Bluehost cPanel, click on "Password protect directories", and find the main folder for your site, which is either public_html or a subfolder if your site is an addon domain. Follow the instructions to add a password and protect the folder.

Hope that helps.

[felgall]

Remember that these days every page is an entry page to your site so just taking down the home page still leaves all of the other pages accessible. The best solution is to create your new site on your own computer and upload it all in one go leaving the old site there until you are ready. Alternatively you will need to either password protect your whole site while you update it, set all the pages to redirect to a "temporarily unavailable" page, or just accept that people can see your changes as you make them.

[pinkme]

thank you!