Hello, My team is building a site that we want to be private until the official "public" launch. What's the best way to secure a site so that it is kept from prying eyes (and google indexing)? I've seen sites that are invite-only and some that bring up a popup box asking for admin credentials. Any ideas on the best way to keep things private (other than just working on a private/local server) Thanks!
If you are dealing with a limited number of individuals, you can just use .htaccess basic auth. Quick and easy. Otherwise, if your site has any sort of login system, just tweak it so that it covers the entire site, and turn off the ability for users to self-register. It's not necessary if you've done either of the above, but otherwise you can keep Google out with robots.txt.
If you have never linked to your site, and don't have any google related code running on it then it shouldn't be able to find it so I wouldnt worry too much. However htaccess based auth is what I would use if I had to... or deny any IP thats not yours.
Just password protect the public_html directory from the control panel. Everyone can then log in with the same password and usename.