IP Allowed List

Note: This plugin is old. I’ve built a newer version here.

If you’re a professional developer, as I am, you’ll build a lot of websites.  You’ll want to show these sites to your clients, but you won’t want to release them to the general public until you’re ready to launch.

I like the IP Allowed List approach – only people with their IP address on the allowed list can view the site, and others see a generic “Coming Soon” page.  But that was kind of messy, so I’ve packaged it up into a plugin.

If you install and activate this plugin, everyone who visits your site will see a generic “Coming Soon” page.   You can customise this page as much as you like, editing the raw HTML directly.

Generic "Coming Soon" page

Your can log into the admin area to see the controls.  You can see a list of all the IP addresses allowed, and you can change tokens.

Tokens are pretty much just a keyword in the URL.  If the token to add yourself to the allowed list is “letmein”, then visiting this address will add your current IP to the allowed list:

http://site.com/?letmein

Settings page

So you can install the plugin, then send that link to your client, who will then be able to view the site you’ve been working on.

• Download IP Allowed List v1.1 from the Plugin directory

I’m considering upgrading the “Coming Soon” content editor to allow you to use the built-in WordPress editor to change content.  Look for that in future releases.

"Coming Soon" Editor