When you’re building lots of WordPress sites, there’s often stuff you need to do which is relatively unsexy but nonetheless necessary. Hiding the site while it is in the process of being built is one of those things – partly because clients are understandably funny about half-built stuff going live, but also because Google’s rabid spidering can get hold of sites pre-launch, and once spidered it’s a dog to get Google to un-spider..
There are a few plugins which do this for you in WordPress, and we’ve probably tried them all, but JF3 is easily the best. Presenting users with a message when they’re not logged in is a no-brainer for a plugin like this, and JF3 obviously does this. What sets it aside is the fact you can get it to auto-generate a temporary login key which you can then email to a client:
Everyone without the key is locked out, anyone with it gets to browse the site. Simple, effective – we like.
Get it at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/jf3-maintenance-mode/
