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What's the best method for noindex during wordpress theme editing?

by Rbtmarshall
9 replies
  • WEB DESIGN
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I am experimenting with theme editing and plan on filling a site with lorem ipsum content so that I can see the effects of changes made in the theme.


What is the nest way to prevent my site from being indexed over the next few weeks while I make these changes?

I don't want to be indexed for non relevant content, and I would like to avoid missing pages that were indexed while editing, since I will be removing the posts, comments, pictures, etc. after the theme is finished.
#editing #noindex #setup #theme #wordpress
  • Profile picture of the author Rbtmarshall
    For now I have selected noindex on all options in Yoast WordPress SEO. I can reset the plugin back to default after I edit the theme and save it.

    I'm not sure if this is the best way or even if it fully works, but at least i clicked noindex a bunch of times.:rolleyes:
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  • Profile picture of the author TheContentAuthority
    Rbtmarhsall,

    If you have achieved this in your SEO plugin that should be fine. Another route you could take it to disallow all agents in robots.txt. This would prevent any search engine from indexing your site during development.

    Here is a tutorial on how to accomplish this and you would have to upload the file via FTP,

    The Web Robots Pages

    Hope that helps,

    Shawn
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  • Profile picture of the author Rbtmarshall
    Thanks Shawn,

    My first thought was to create a robots.txt and noindex or disallow bots.

    But I came across a few posts that mentioned the url's still show up at times in search, I'm not positive, but I was thinking that may cause me to have broken links indexed after I finish the theme and delete the filler content.

    say if I created filler content during theme editing :
    text post 1
    test post 2
    image post 1
    test category

    etc....

    would those URL's still be indexed even though the content isnt.






    here is a video where he talks about uncrawled URL's still being indexed die to the robots.txt

    In yoast plugin the options are noindex/nofollow on many items ( posts, categories, etc.) According to this video noindex/nofollow seems like the best option for what I am trying to accomplish. But I am unsure whether the Yoast plugin catches all the possible pages that I want to avoid being indexed.



    maybe I'm just over-thinking this and confusing myself.
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  • Profile picture of the author TheContentAuthority
    Rbtmarshall,

    You raise a very good point here that I was not aware of. So what the first video is saying is that a link to a page that may be blocked by robots.txt is indexed but the content is not (because Google is abiding by the robots file). So if there are already links to your website there is a possibility that it could still be showing up in search. If there are not, then it shouldn’t. Further, it may also depend on the anchor text that exists for your website on other websites. Matt’s example in the video was “California DMV”. I’m not sure if Google will return results if users were to use other queries that did not have anchor text existing with the California dmv link although it would seem that they wouldn’t (because how else would Google know that that exact link they have indexed is relevant to say “California vehicle registration info” or something of that nature?).

    So if you have backlinks built to your site already, there is a good chance that it is already showing up in search. You can try the link: operator to see what shows up or use some type of free backlink checker (unless you already know there are backlinks to your site).

    As to your question about broken links, as long as you don’t change the file path your links will work fine even though you will change the content from the test stuff to real stuff. For instance if you put out a test page at Example Domain and then change the content later without changing the URL (and the link is indexed) there will not be a broken link. I’ll assume that you probably don’t want your URL’s to say “testpost” so if that link gets indexed and it has received a high ranking in SERP’s, you may want to redirect the URL to the final URL using .htaccess or some other method. I’m guessing that you won’t be testing for so long that this will be necessary. For instance if you have your test posts out there and they get indexed, I doubt they will be receiving so much traffic that you will say “darn I have to redirect these now or I’ll lose all this traffic”.

    I hope that all makes sense for you.
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  • Profile picture of the author Kingfish85
    Password protect the directory that the site is running in. Nothing can access it without entering the u/p combo.
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  • Profile picture of the author SteveJohnson
    Originally Posted by Rbtmarshall View Post

    I am experimenting with theme editing and plan on filling a site with lorem ipsum content so that I can see the effects of changes made in the theme.


    What is the nest way to prevent my site from being indexed over the next few weeks while I make these changes?

    I don't want to be indexed for non relevant content, and I would like to avoid missing pages that were indexed while editing, since I will be removing the posts, comments, pictures, etc. after the theme is finished.
    The very best way is to do the development on your own machine. It's not very hard to set up a local webserver on your computer.

    The next best, if you have to use the live server, is to instal WP into a subdirectory and work from there. Then when it's time for the site to go live, you make a couple of changes on your Settings page, copy a couple of files, and you're all set. If you don't link to the folder that WP is in, the Big G will not know that it exists.

    Of course, you'll want to set your privacy settings ( 'Search Engine Visibility' on the Settings > Reading page ) but remember to uncheck the box when you take the site 'live'.
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  • Profile picture of the author SteveJohnson
    --- OR ---

    You can add this to your theme's functions.php file:

    Code:
    /** temporary redirect */
function go_away() {
    if ( ! is_admin() && ! is_user_logged_in() )
        wp_redirect( home_url(), 403 );
        exit;
}
add_action( 'wp', 'go_away' );
    This would send ANYONE, who isn't logged in and tries to access the front-end of the site, away with a '403 Forbidden' HTTP response.

    Or you could send them to a 'coming-soon.html' HTML file in your WP directory, with a status of '302 Moved Temporarily':
    Code:
    /** temporary redirect */
function go_away() {
    if ( ! is_admin() && ! is_user_logged_in() )
        wp_redirect( home_url() . '/coming-soon.html', 302 );
        exit;
}
add_action( 'wp', 'go_away' );
    Lots of ways to skin this cat.
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    The 2nd Amendment, 1789 - The Original Homeland Security.

    Gun control means never having to say, "I missed you."

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  • Profile picture of the author Rbtmarshall
    Allot of useful advice in this thread.

    Originally Posted by Kingfish85 View Post

    Password protect the directory that the site is running in. Nothing can access it without entering the u/p combo.
    I didn't realize it was that simple.



    found this video for others who may be interested and are using cpanel. this is by hostgator, but I think cpanel is used in many hosts.



    Also,RoboForm >>>Insert Affiliate Link<<< helps with remembering all the passwords, especially if you are running multiple sites. Their browser plugin has a great password generator.
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