Offline Web build question

Hello!
When your website is up, let search engines know that ??
Google: https://search.google.com/search-console/about
Bing: https://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster/
Yahoo: https://help.yahoo.com/kb/SLN2217.html

You didnt understand the question Valentine.

I will try and be clearer.

How can i build a website without having it go live with search engines?

A lightweight way to do this is to use the WordPress tick box:
"Discourage search engines from indexing this site"
Find it on the Dashboard > Settings > Reading page.
Not a very good solution as it leaves it up to the search engine to honour your request.

A surefire way is to “Password protect” the website base directory, this is what I do in the cPanel website management tools.
– Set the domain nameservers to point to your hosting.
– The primary domain will use “public_html” folder, make all the others domains point at their own directory, cPanel will suggest that they be subdirectories of public_html but you can change this.
– Use the cPanel “autoinstall SSL” tool to fetch your free letsencrypt SSL certificates, this must be done before adding password protection. Usually this only takes minutes, if you take too long (60 or 90 days) to develop your websites you may need to revisit this step.
– Make all of your website base directories password protected. Give each a name, user and password AND write them down. Your browser will remember them if you let it.
– NOW install WordPress and develop your websites, only you and people you give the access codes to will be able to view them.
– When you are done developing be sure to untick the "Discourage search engines from indexing this site" control, remove the password protection and use the links provided by Valentine to get your sites known to the search bots.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 1 month ago by RossMitchell.

Ross thanks for those alternative methods.

Im going to try the version my hosting provider has suggested.

Has anyone used the local host file on their computer to view their website changes?

Here is what Site Ground have to say:

https://www.siteground.com/kb/how_to_use_the_hosts_file/

What I dont understand is where does that I.P address come from which they mention?

It seems that if you do this, and dont have any name servers pointing at your domain, none of the search engines will find you until you alter the domain names to point at your domain

and in the mean time you just use the local host pointed at your domain at such and such an ip address

I was going to mention using the hosts file but didn’t as password protection is simpler.

What I dont understand is where does that I.P address come from which they mention?

This is the IP address of the hosting computer, determine it by:
– Your hosting support could tell you.
– If you “ping” the website management domain name it will give you this.

Details on hosts file for various systems:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_(file)

So I have answered my original question – This answer is a solution for creating an environment where you can freely develop your website or websites without it showing live online. I chose this method so that I can freely develop and get everything to a certain standard before i register the site with the search engines (Called indexing by developers) and as mentioned in the first answer by Valentine)

Once you have completed the development you can change the domain name servers to point to your hosting provider and get it indexing. This isnt a guide for that step but just getting you safely offline and developing through a live internet connection locally through your computer.

1. Buy your domain name with whoever you choose https://www.weneedhelp.com

2. Familiarise yourself with the cPanel – (This is provided by the domain name supplier and you will use the same login details you used to create the account in order to purchase the domain name)

3. In the cPanel find the section called nameserver records or similiar – Its important to find this and mentally log that it exists. You will come back to this when you want your website to be shown to the world. Or maybe just a few people if your SEO isnt very good ??

4. Leave the name servers of your domain name provider set to their default.

4. Once you have decided where your hosting is going to be setup (I recommend a separate provider who offers the fastest hosting for wordpress but do your own research for what ever country you live in) Open an account there and install wordpress for your domain. You will be asked to create a username and password. This is what you will use later to access the back end of the website which I have discussed in th final step of this guide. Make a note or save it what ever you do. Once this is done and wordpress is installed ask the hosting provider to give you the IP address for your website which as of now is a bare bones wordpress installation on a server in the middle of nowehere accessible by no one completely un edited

4. Once you have the IP address you are now going to tell your computer how to access this website. It will be a secret. Only you and your computer will know

5. This is for windows – On the blank screen of your main desktop page right click in the empty space – Click new and then go to shortcut. In the dialouge box click browse. Now click OS C drive windows system32 and then scroll down and find notepad click this and the notepad shortcut is created on the desktop homepage

6. The notepad needs to be opened in administrator mode. To do this right click on the shortcut you just created and click run as administrator.

7. Now go to file open C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc when you get to the end you will most likely have a blank page if you do change the dialouge box in the bottom right corner to all files. Once the files list is populated select the file called host

8. Dont worry about anything written in this file. Go to the last entry, click your mouse cursor at the end of the last piece of text and click enter so your at the start of the next blank line. Do not enter a hashtag like every line above (this means ignore) now type your ip address given by your hosting supplier then one space and your domain name without www. and then again with www.

for example lets say your hosting supplier gave you the ip address 123.123.12.12 and your domain name is godhelpus.com

on the blank line you started enter:

123.123.12.12 godhelpus.com https://www.godhelpus.com

save the file

9. To test this do the following: Close your webbrowser and re open to ensure it clears caching etc

type godhelpus.com

you should be able to see something – Depending on whats installed on the hosting server

This is exactly how your website will appear to someone using the same webbrowser on a similiar device with similiar software once you make it live.

This is the front end

To login to the back end where you can edit the website just add /wp-admin after your domain name

example – godhelpus.com/wp-admin

by the way that add on gets you to the back in web development part of every website on the net and its the same process for any further websites you create

the username and password was set when you installed wordpress with your host type these credentials in that box and that ets you in to the web development part

Hey Ross thanks for the reply hopefully this thread will be pretty useful for someone else in the future if they can find it. Ive put a few tags do you have anymore to suggest? Cant really think what someone is searching to do the same

Thank you for embracing the use of these threads as a community resource and feeding back your conclusions.

However may I add some additional points:
– Using the “hosts” file technique cuts you off from accessing the free SSL certificates from letsencrypt, you either need to buy a certificate OR at some later date transition your website from http to https when you take the site live.
– Some hosting providers will not let you add an ADDON domain unless the nameserver settings is already pointing to the host. In the past I have had to talk to my hosting support to circumvent this. This is apparently a security measure.

On the other hand the hosts file technique lets you leave a legacy website operating while you develop its replacement.