Create a Temp/Splash Page in WordPress

Often times I will be working on a WordPress theme that I want to live test, but I don’t want to reveal it to the world yet. The solution would be to throw up a temp page while you work. However, you may have noticed that throwing an index.html file in the WordPress directory or similar solutions break WordPress. Today I’ll tell you how to get around that.

This solution is pretty simple. First you create the temp page, which will probably have reduced mark-up, CSS in the header, and the whole 9 yards as far as temp or splash pages go. Take that and make it a page template in the WordPress theme you’re working on (do that with the comment /* Template Name: Splash */ at the top of the page). Now make sure to add the 2 tags that make your page a WordPress ready page. Somewhere in the head, add <?php wp_head(); ?>. Right before the </body> tag, add <?php wp_footer(); ?>. Save it!

From there, go into your WordPress admin panel and create a page using that template. Then create a regular page; that will be where your blog posts show up (Just a title, no content needed here). Once you save them, go to Settings->Reading and Under “Front page displays” choose the radio button, “A static page.”  Make the front page your temp page and the blog posts page the second page you created.

Your WordPress domain will now point to your temp page. Just remember the URL for the blog posts page so you can get in to view  the rest of your site while testing!