One of my frustrations when developing WordPress websites (separate from Thesis) is trying to have a “coming soon/under construction/under development” page so that the public gets the message that things are coming while I and the client can work away in the background. Why would you need this? Well in most cases you have a domain name purchased and parked somewhere. Many times you get a lovely, unsightly, generic ‘coming soon’ page that looks very unprofessional.

This tutorial is for people who use Thesis, however you can use this technique for any WordPress website under development where having a custom design is needed right out of the gate.

What are the benefits?

• Design and develop website with a single install of WordPress
• No need for an index.html page to hide your WordPress site under construction (this creates preview hell with clients)
• No need to move any files when you are ready to “turn on” the website
• Allows authorized people to add/edit/delete content in the WordPress admin interface while the design is underway
• Allows authorized people to see the progress of the website overall without the public seeing anything

I can hear some of the purists already set to put me on the stake and burn me for suggesting the use of an “under development/construction” page citing that “one should not publish a website until it is ready for public consumption.” However, when dealing with WordPress, or any database driven website, moving databases, encoded URL’s and all the supporting files around to different directories can be laborious and create the opportunity for errors when you are ready to launch—at that stage of the process who needs more work! Not me.

What if you want to allow others (clients, etc.) access to the WordPress install so that they can start entering content while you are busy getting customizations (GUI, plugins, etc.) dialed in for prime-time? What can you do?

I have an answer that I came across today while working on a friends website and I am sharing the process in this tutorial.

What we needed on this website project was:

1. A “coming soon/under construction/under development” page for public consumption
2. Access to the wp-admin area for me and my friend (client[s])
3. Ability to preview the custom design online that looks entirely different from the “coming soon” page with both viewable
4. Ability to navigate the entire “in-development” website without having to go to another web-server
5. Ability to install everything (WordPress, Thesis, Database) initially and leave it there when the website goes live
6. Ability to make the website go live in less than 3 minutes when we are ready to “turn it on”

We’ve done all of the above and it is relatively simple to do.

What you will need to complete this tutorial?

1. WordPress already installed
2. Thesis already installed (optional)
3. WordPress admin access
4. FTP access
5. A WordPress plugin called Theme Test Drive
6. A “coming soon/under construction/under development” page for public consumption that you can upload via FTP

First Step—Creating your “coming soon” page

You should first open your “coming soon/under construction/under development“ page in an editing program. You want to add the following to the top of this file before any html:

<?php
/*
Template Name: Placeholder Page
*/
?>

• The rest of the file should contain whatever message/graphics you want for public consumption.
• Be sure that all css/styling is within your file
• Be sure to save the file [name].php, for me its placeholder.php, or temphome.php
• Upload this file via FTP to: ~/wp-content/themes/default
  • This is the default theme folder that comes with WordPress when you install, if you don’t have it, get it.

Second Step—Install theme plug-in

Download and install the Theme Test Drive plugin from Vladimir Prelovac to your WordPress plugins directory. If you need help with downloading, installing and activating plugins go to the source at WordPress.

Third Step—Creating the placeholder page in WordPress

Create a new page within WordPress. Give it a title–I called mine “Placeholder” and in the content area I entered, “This is a placeholder page. If you want to go to the actual homepage click here.”

I make the text “click here” a hyperlink but only give it the “#” sign for now (to link nowhere) until we deal with the homepage redirect which we will do in the next step.

Before you save the page go to the right side of the page, the right sidebar, to the Attributes to change the Template from the “Default Template” to “Placeholder Template” and then click Publish. This will ensure that the correct page is showing.

Fourth Step—Making the placeholder page the ‘homepage’

In this step you will make the page you created in the previous step the homepage. This is so it will be viewed to the public as the “coming soon/under construction/under development“ page.  Go to the Settings/Reading in admin. Under the Reading settings you want to select the radio button next to “A static page (select below).” Then from the pull-down menu next to “Front Page” select Placeholder page.

Fifth Step—Setting up the development theme prefs

Check the theme setting and set Theme Test Drive preferences. Navigate to the Appearance sidebar options, and select Themes. Now select WordPress Default as your theme option. You are doing this so that the public at large sees the placeholder page.

Next navigate to Appearance/Theme Test Drive in the sidebar.

You want to select the theme you are developing or customizing. In my case this is Thesis. If you are not using Thesis then select the theme you are working with, or customizing.

Sixth Step—Setup the ‘real’ homepage

Create a new page in WordPress. This new page should be the real homepage that you are going to use in your design and development process. This page will be the homepage once the website is “live.” Be sure to take note of the permalink you give the page so that you can go back to you placeholder page and insert the link to this page from your placeholder page. This will allow you to easily get to the real homepage when you are developing the new website.

Why can’t the public get to your real homepage?

People may only be able to access the placeholder page with the homepage link if you are signed into WordPress in the admin role (which you can setup when you setup the Theme Test Drive setup). You may set whatever level of access that you desire. The key is being logged into WordPress admin area. If you are not logged in, cookies are not set, and you get the “coming soon/under construction/under development” page. If you are logged in you get the placeholder page with the link set to the real homepage (remember that permalink I mentioned previously).

Seventh Step—Edit your placeholder page

Return to edit your placeholder page you created in the Third step. When the content of this page is editable you want to change the target link of the “click here” text to the permalink you have from the previous step. Highlight the link and click the link icon from the toolbar to then paste in your permalink. Be sure to click the “Update Page” blue button on the right.

Eighth Step—Taking a peek to see what you got

You should now be able to look at the homepage of your website and ‘see’ if you are looking at your “coming soon/under construction/under development“ page. And you should be able to see the placeholder page as well. You need to know the following distinction:

• If you are signed into the admin area of WordPress and use that browser to look at the site you will see placeholder page.
• If you use a browser that is free and clear of the WordPress admin area then you will see the “coming soon/under construction/under development“ page

The trick is this.

1. In a separate web browser tab, while logged into WordPress, go to the URL of the website in development.
2. You will see the ‘placeholder’ page.
3. Then return to the WordPress admin area and click ‘logout’ in the upper right corner.
4. Now return to the tab containing the development website and click refresh.
5. Voila! you now see the “under development/construction/coming soon” page.

Ninth Step—(When the time comes) Switching to the live website

At some point your website is going to be ready for primetime and you will want to make it “live.” To achieve that do the following

• Go to the Settings/Reading in admin
• Then from the pull-down menu next to “Front Page” change it from placeholder page to your home page
• Go to Plugins and deactivate Theme Test Drive
• Go to Appearance/Themes and make sure the proper theme is selected
• You should now visit http://www.yourwebsite.com and see your finished work

Wrap Up

This should do the trick.  As always I hope this tutorial is of benefit and let me know if you have any questions or comments. Always know that others may not understand what I believe to have explained clearly. Also, if you have an alternative take on a step or process I welcome your input.

Hope this helps.

UPDATE: July 7, 2009

Laurie recently posted a comment below about a plugin called Maintenance Mode. For those of you developing inside the Thesis world using this plugin is the way to go. In particular the ability to select “custom template” from the page template menu is key. With my tutorial outlined above it is a workable solution in Thesis but requires some additional hoop-jumping if you are using custom page templates and custom sidebars (as I typically do). See Laurie’s comment below to get Maintenance Mode going. Hope this helps.

I’ve changed my attitude a bit since the stroke of midnight on 12/31/2008. Nothing drastic just a change of perspective really. I have decided (key word) to be less stressed. Yes, I have decided to be less stressed. I can you know. Because after all stress does really comes down to choice. When presented with a situation I can choose to stress about it, or go with the flow. During last year I tended towards the stressed side of life. Everything became stressful no matter how insignificant or benign. It was exhausting, frustrating, tiring, and no fun at all.

I worked hard in the last half of last year to come to understand that everything involves choice–especially your emotional state, what and how you label things, and how you ‘feel’ about it. Thing for me was that being ‘stressed’ with regard to just about everything became default behaviour. The stress compounded to create anxiety about everything. I got tired of feeling stressed all the time and sought out answers and remedies to feeling stressed all the time. Yes, hot baths, exercise, massage, acupuncture all help create periods of relaxation but they can be fleeting. What I needed was a something longer term and I found it in understanding that I have a choice to how I react to everything around me. Choice is the power to steer clear of default behaviours. The first step is awareness and from that ‘choice’ can turn what would be stressful by default into just another thing. The fact that I did not do my 15 minutes of posting yesterday? No stress. It was a holiday.

So, I’m not sure I see this change as a resolution so much as a serious lifestyle change, or should I say lifestyle ‘choice?’ Do you see stress as a choice? Or, something else?

Meetings, email, projects, laundry, dinner, kids, cell phone ringing! Don’t pull the alarm yet. They all demand your time and attention many at the same time as each other. No wonder our sleep-deprived lives are fueled by a steady diet of caffeine all the while stumbling around dazed and confused.

I recently read an article in the most recent Oprah magazine titled, “Wait! Stop! It’s All Too Much” by Martha Beck. I don’t typically read Oprah but my wife has a subscription and recently read this article and had to pass it along to me. Why? Because the stuff I complain about on a frequent basis was talked about in this article. The feeling of overwhelm is usually characterized by something called attentional blindness. It’s the feeling you get when presented with too many stimuli. As the article says, ” you sink into a muddled netherworld, like Dorothy in the poppy fields of Oz. Your intentions grow fuzzy. Is it dementia? Is it Alzheimer’s? Sheer cursed laziness? None of the above.” I have had this feeling on more than one occasion and it’s disabling.

A great example.
For a great example of attentional blindness go here and watch this video (It takes a moment to load).

You need to focus on the white team and how many times they pass the ball. Go do this now and then come back and continue reading. Don’t continue to read until you have done this.

Done? Great. Now how many times did they pass the ball? I counted 15. Should be about right. Want to know what is really the trick in that video? About halfway through a person in a gorilla suit walked through, thumped their chest and walked out? Did you see that while you were counting? If not, you just experienced attentional blindness.

You should go and read her full article. She does give a 6-step process for helping train your clogged mind to focus and help strip out the overwhelm. I highly recommend it.

I often wonder how the hell am I ever going to reach the promised land? I read many blogs on productivity and life-hacks and wonder when it will happen. When will I ever get all my crap together and sit cross-legged floating 3 inches off the ground while scanning to-do lists, doing, deferring, and delegating all the while with a blissful calm about me?

Our workloads can, at times, get quite heavy. The workload I am referring to is the professional sort. Not that I am making personal or family workloads less relevant—trust me they are very relevant and very heavy in their own right—it just that the professional workload can dominate our lives. I believe this is due to the fact that for those of us doing the 9-5 a majority of our waking time is spent in the professional workload mode.

Recently the professional workload has gotten quite heavy for me. This is not something new as workloads wax and wane as do the phases of the moon. However, when I am in the heavy workload phase I notice a slight shift in productivity—a clarity of focus and purpose if you will. Initially when the heavy workload begins its climb I tend to fight it. I will try and procrastinate, put off, and mentally deny that I have a lot to do. All during this fight phase I am typically not very productive. I can usually be found rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Then one day it ‘clicks’ and I start to get my productivity-fu going, or flowing. I cease the fight and give in to the flow. Face it, eventually if you keep fighting you will lose. You need to give in and go with the flow.

When the flow hits my lists of tasks become very targeted. My communications are more succinct and less chatty. I really start lining things up and knocking them down as I always dream of doing. The paradox of this is I seem to need to proceed through the procrastination and fight before I hit the flow–before I hit the fu.

I wonder how others perceive their fight and flow in relation to their workloads? Are you a fighter? Do you ever get into the flow? Or are you in the flow all the time?

I am the father of 3 terrific boys (7, 4.5, 16 months). Finding this post in my RSS reader and then reading comments made me think of some things.

• The first child is a piece of cake after you have…
• The second child. Definitely raises the bar. Manageable but your dealing with things to the power of 2.
• By the third child you and your spouse are outnumbered. You go from man-to-man to zone defense.

I look back on having one kid and I think I could handle that blindfolded while juggling 2 chainsaws in my right hand.

Seriously though the combination of spouse, parent, and business owner is a challenging mix. Particularly without any sort of systems in place to help manage, organize and prioritize.

I worked from a home office for the first 2 years of my new business. Then sleep deprivation set in. Too many days of interruption in the office only to have Papa stay up late (2-3am) to catch up on everything only to get up by 7am to get the kiddos off to school, etc.

I now have an office 5 miles from home. Separation of personal and professional is key, at least for me. It has made me be better about managing my time. I’m no where near a zen master in time management, but it is getting better–slowly–but better.

I’ve been using GTD for a couple of years now. I have fallen off the wagon 3 times. Systems crash and you start to use your head for keeping track of everything. One thing for sure is you need to figure out what system works for you, keep tweaking it, and be flexible.

Last bit. Meditation is HUGE.

Take 20-30 minutes a day to get “mind like silence.”