How to make changes so users won't see

I want to make some changes to my site without users being able to see. I want to work on a music player for the site, but I know it will take me a while so I don’t want it on my main site until it is finished.

I created a folder in my root directory called “secret” and created an index.php file there. I know you must require the wp-blog-header.php and call the get_header() and get_footer() functions for it to properly work. I then copied what’s in my other index.php for the real site and pasted it in there as well.

There are a lot of calls that my theme uses (like is_front_page() and others) that won’t work properly in this new file hierarchy.

My question is, is there an easy way to exactly replicate my front page so I can make edits to that php file so users will not see these edits until I am ready to release the fully finished page? I can’t seem to get it to work correctly.

Thanks,
Jason