How To Unpublish WordPress Site

We have been writing about WordPress quite a bit. Why? Because it is awesome and offers many options and functions. There may come a time when you will want to hide your website or un-publish it while you make changes. How does one go about this, short of having to delete all files, it’s really quite easy. We are going to show you a few quick ways on how to un-publish WordPress website.

BACK IT UP

Just like with anything else you do to any website, please make sure you back it up. We cannot stress how important this is. If for any reason something goes wrong, having a back-up is the best safety net to getting your website back up and running without having to worry about starting from scratch. Take the time and back-up your site, you will thank us later.

UNPUBLISHING OPTIONS

As with anything else, WordPress has options for you to go about un-publishing your site or specific pages. This all really depends on what you are trying to do. If you are trying to completely remove your website from the web, then the obvious choice is just to delete the site completely from your server or simply cancel your hosting services.  If you are just trying to un-publish your site because you are making changes or doing maintenance to your website or its pages, then you have a couple of options.

Maintenance Plugin

There are quite a few plugin options available that will put up “COMING SOON” or “SITE DOWN FOR MAINTENANCE” landing page.  This page will keep the rest of your site hidden as you do what you gotta do.

Only those that have Admin log-in credentials will have the ability to see the site and the changes made until the plugin is disable.  This is a great option because you can still provide a landing page to your visitors with information about your business and the changes you are making. These plugins will be enabled site-wide. So no matter if your visitors visit certain permalinks, they will still be greeted by the temporary page. Some of these plugins allow for full customization. Some are free and some are not. Don’t be afraid to test some out and see which one works best for you. If you are lucky you can just make due with a free option.

Unpublish Pages

If you are looking to make changes to a certain page and you know it’s not going to take too long, then you can simply go to the page or posts options and set it to draft. This will take the page offline and make it inactive on your site.

The page itself is still available for editing. Once you have made all the necessary changes that you wanted to make, all you have to do is publish the page or post again. You will not lose your permalink and your site will be back in action.

OTHER OPTIONS

If you are wanting to do a full rebuild of your site, but can’t afford to lose business with a “COMING SOON” page or un-publishing pages or posts, then talk with your hosting service about temporary spots called Staging areas. This is provided by many hosting companies. A staging area is a temporary area on the server where you can build and test your new site without affecting the current site you have up.

You will have a temporary URL but full WordPress build capabilities. Once you are done building your site, testing it and backing up your current site (Please do not forget to do this, we repeat, DO NOT FORGET TO BACKUP YOUR CURRENT SITE), you can deploy the temp site to the permanent space and the new website will be active.  Please make sure to speak to your hosting service about this and find out what the requirements are as far as where the domain has to be and how DNS has to be set-up.

Note: If all of this is too confusing and scary, don’t resist contacting your hosting provider or even hiring someone that is more experienced in this type of work. We know folks who have worked with several different hosting companies, Dreamhost, GoDaddy and Siteground. Their customer service has been excellent when asked questions about staging and how to go about doing it without worry.

DO THE RIGHT THING

To sum it all up, think about what you want to accomplish and pick the right option for you and don’t forget…Backup your website.

ADCAFFEINE MARKETING FOR ALL OF YOUR WEBSITE NEEDS

We are here to help you bring your vision to life.  If you have been sitting on the idea to make a website for your business, but have not because you don’t know how or whom to hire, well look no further.  AdCaffeine Marketing specializes in website design and also the marketing and advertising for your business.  We understand how important having an online presence is in this day and age, so we pay close attention to your every need. Our goal is to provide you with the website of your dreams and the results you have been looking for. If you are looking to market your site and also want some SEO services, we got you covered.  AdCaffeine is your one stop shop to get you started on your road to success.  Please feel free to contact us and set up a consultation. We look forward to working with you.