How can I work on a WordPress theme already installed in the root directory?

Question

I have WordPress installed at the root level of a website. I thought it would be easy enough to have a "coming soon" page called default.html and edit the .htaccess file as follows:

AddHandler php5-script .php
DirectoryIndex default.html index.php
# BEGIN WordPress
# END WordPress

...so that visitors to the site are sent to the default page, and I could manually specify index.php as my destination for testing. (This isn't a high-security job.) But index.php is redirecting me to the default page. When I remove the DirectoryIndex line, the index.php file is found automatically by visitors to the site root, but... that's the page I was trying to hide.

What am I doing wrong with .htaccess and how can I get it to behave the way I want?

Answer 1

I use a different (easier) method of achieving the same thing.

• create a simple "coming soon" theme (I think there is one in the gallery you can modify).
• install the Theme Test Drive (TTD) plugin here's the info: http://www.prelovac.com/vladimir/wordpress-plugins/theme-test-drive
• Configure TTD to send all standard users to your "coming soon" theme and you (admin user) to the design you're working on automatically
• you can send links to others (non-admin users) for feedback by simply adding a url variable
• when you're happy with the design simply make the new design the default and disable TTD

It's worked really well for me and might be a bit simpler for future/frequent mods than hacking .htaccess.

Good luck, James