I'm using Bluehost staging options to upload a wp site that I have made locally to a test server and was wondering if there is a solution to password protect the staging/test site so only the people who employ me can see it.
I'm using Bluehost staging options to upload a wp site that I have made locally to a test server and was wondering if there is a solution to password protect the staging/test site so only the people who employ me can see it.
WordPress has an option to protect each page's content using a password. That is done using the right panel just below/under the publish button.
However if you want to hide the entire site and make it visible only to users who are logged-in, then you should consider using a "maintenance plugin" or a "construction plugin", you can look up for those terms in your Plugins section and try one of those plugins.
One way I have done this for an existing (not new) site is to place all of the new files in a subfolder of the main site.
Then I use an htaccess/htpassword file to protect that folder. I might even only allow certain IP addresses to access that folder.
The site URL settings are something like https://www.example/newsite . I can test it using that URL.
Once ready to go live, I go into the database (I use the "Better Search and Replace" plugin) to replace all instances of https://www.example/newsite with https://www.example . Then I change the URL in the wp-options table (two places).
Finally, I set up the hosting for that domain to point the domain root to the new folder. After a bit of propagation delay, all is well.
