Simple wordpress/website question
 

I have a blog right now that is doing just okay but I want to totally redesign it and add a bunch of new features and stuff to it...the problem is I want to work on it and have a temp page up that says it's under construction. How can I do that while working on the index.php?

Create your page as index.htm and it should show before index.php.

Sweet, thanks :thumbsup

There are also many wordpress plugins to put your blog in maintenance mode...like this one

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/maintenance-mode/

Logged in admin can see the full blog

use .htaccess

Yep, and if for some reason it doesn't just put in a simple line in the htaccess and tell it wither .php or .html is more important, just google like "htaccess extension php html"


http://www.fileinfo.com/extension/HTACCESS

In your theme dir, create a index-new.php open it and in the comments at the top add: Template Name: New Index

In that template, rip out everything or leave the wp header/footer. Fill in the guts with whatever you want. Upload it back to your theme.

Then go make a new page in the wp admin, select the template in the drop down to the right of the post box, select the New Index template, give your page a title you can easily notice.

Then go into Settings > Reading. Select a Static front page, then under front page select page title above.

That should do it.

theme tester plugin lets you play around with a new theme design without changing the old one

I use this for testing or fucking around with existing sites.

http://bitnami.org/stack/wordpress - lets you install wordpress locally and then you just import your blog posts from the site, toss the theme in the theme directory and go to town, just like editing the live version of the site but doing so locally.

I love it.

I have a better option - set up new database or copy the old one and work there. Then after its done, upload it to the actual site. That way you won't lose any visitors. There is no need to have "under construction" or whatever that will blow off your visitors.
Ps: And the above poster has the same idea. So do that - either set up locally or set up temp database on your server and work there. Do not work on actual site. That way you won't lose and won't piss off visitors.