For those not working on a site with a CMS, nor having a staging server - how do you "hide" a site and its home page temporarily while it's being worked on?
Rename the home page index2.whatever and put up a cover page named index.whatever. This can create a few navigation problems with interior links. I have hidden a php based site behind an index.html page for as long a 6 months.
Where are you hosting it? I'd suggest making a subdomain... like new.yourdomain.com and use that as your new site, then just move the files... it's worked for me a few times...
First suggestion, dont work on the live site. As other have suggested you can create a subdomain for testing purposes. This should be fairly painless for most practical purposes. If you really do want to work on the live version of the site I would suggest using a server side code such as PHP to get the job done. <?php //replace with your external ip from http://whatsmyinfo.com $my_ip="127.0.0.1"; if($_server['remote_addr'] != $my_ip){ die("This page is currently being worked on. Please try again later"); } ?> Code (php): This is not ideal, but it should work.