Can I "hide" published pages?

[jasmine07]

My website is still under construction (www.emigratetv.com) but I want to upload all the pages to test if the links etc work. However, Google is finding the pages too quickly and I'm not yet ready for the world to see the finished result! Is there any way I can check links etc then make the website "invisible" without having to remove then re-upload all the pages at a later date? Any help would be much appreciated.

[Andy128]

Re: Can I "hide" published pages?

Jasmine-

Read this thread for your answer.

http://www.vodahost.com/vodatalk/bluevoda-general-issues/28014-testing-my-site.html?highlight=test+publish

Cheers and Merry Christmas.

Andy

[zuriatman]

Re: Can I "hide" published pages?

Jasmine,

To test your links before publising go to "Tools" select "Verify Links"

What is most important is for you to have your "index" page up first so you can test your urls from your index page, as you publish the new pages.

[jasmine07]

Re: Can I "hide" published pages?

Hi Andy and Zuriatman-thanks to you both for your input - and I hope you had a good Christmas.

I can't get the "tools-verify links" to do anything, but I love the idea of testing all the pages you suggested Andy from the thread you gave me.

Am now busy uploading and testing! Thanks again.

[AJ113]

Re: Can I "hide" published pages?

I'm no expert but wouldn't it be easier just to exclude all pages from se spiders by editing robots.txt?

[jasmine07]

Re: Can I "hide" published pages?

Sorry-not sure what this means?

[zuriatman]

Re: Can I "hide" published pages?

Jasmine,

You can also do it this way.

Goto your CPanel>file manager>public_html and add a new folder
and name it "test_pages".

Publish any page to this folder that you want to test online.
Then open your IE Browser and type in the url to the test pages.
you will have to publish a few pages to this folder if you want to test your
CSS and menu hyperlinks. Once you are satisfied delete the files and re-publish to "public_html/"

[AJ113]

Re: Can I "hide" published pages?

Sorry-not sure what this means?

Sorry Jasmine, I'll explain: There is a file called robots.txt in your public_html folder. If there isn't, create one in notepad and upload it.

The purpose of robots.txt is to stop search engine spiders from crawling pages that you do not want indexed. Here is the content of my own robots.txt:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /www.lose-inches.info/songs.html
Disallow: /www.lose-inches.info/propertymax/relocation.php
Disallow: /www.lose-inches.info/na.html

Just copy this into Notepad, insert your own urls and save it as robots.txt. Upload the file to your public_html folder and your pages will be 'hidden' from search engine spiders, but the pages will still be 'live' on your website.

[AJ113]

Re: Can I "hide" published pages?

Jasmine,

You can also do it this way.

Goto your CPanel>file manager>public_html and add a new folder
and name it "test_pages".

Publish any page to this folder that you want to test online.
Then open your IE Browser and type in the url to the test pages.
you will have to publish a few pages to this folder if you want to test your
CSS and menu hyperlinks. Once you are satisfied delete the files and re-publish to "public_html/"

This doesn't actually resolve Jasmine's problem. She wants to stop search engines indexing her pages while they are under construction. They will still be indexed if she follows your instructions.

[jasmine07]

Re: Can I "hide" published pages?

Thanks everyone for your help. I've decided to "publish and be damned"! I've started uploading pages but adding "under construction" to each one until I've got everything as it should be. I know this means re-uploading later but I think it's probably the simplest way.

[jasmine07]

Re: Can I "hide" published pages?

AJ113-thanks for the explanation about robots.txt. This may come in useful for some pages.

[GreatGretsky]

Re: Can I "hide" published pages?

AJ113 - I followed your advice on creating the robots.txt file in my public_html folder. My understanding is that this procedure keeps the links live on the web but invisible to search engines.

I'm assuming that it will still take a while for search engines to stop turning up those pages. My guess is that the next time a search engine "re-indexes," it will lose sight of those pages. Right? Is that all there is to it?

Also, I'm looking for a procedure to completely "un-publish" links that no longer have any usefulness.

Thanks,

Jon in Phoenix