By mkogel on

I am using Drupal 6.1 on my localhost. Site is ready to migrate to the live server.

I need a way of doing the following before I launch the website to whole world.

I would like to display a page indicating that the site will be online very soon etc.
I would like to provide a login access to certain people who can see the site. These people will receive the login details via emails etc. This is for demo purposes only and some live testing.

What is the best way and also the easiest way of doing this? I am not good at writing codes so I would appreciate a strategy utilising the exisiting modules and functionality of Drupal.

Thanks in advance

⋅ Categories: Drupal 6.x

Comments

jm9’s picture

jm9 commented

You might try the "Front Page" module (http://drupal.org/project/front).

It has an option to display different front pages to Authenticated Users (logged in) and Anonymous users (not logged in).

JM

mkogel’s picture

mkogel commented

thanks, I have front page but it is not an option.

I know I can have a totally unique page with it saying that " we are coming soon". But to show also a form for the invitees to enter the site with a pre-defined password is a problem for me. I cannot code anything like this so I need to work with existing functionality.

I will try the membership module to see if I could use it for this purpose.

I am not a developer so I need idiots guide sometimes

jm9’s picture

jm9 commented

You might look at setting up user account(s) for the invitees and then assign the account(s) to a role that has access to view the site. (This functionality is part of Drupal core.)

I've done this with an intranet type site. The public only sees the front page. Users with an account can login and view nodes and the rest of the site.

For your "coming soon preview", you'll probably need to disable public registrations. Menu location ( Administration -> User management -> User settings ). Set public registrations to "Only site administrators can create new user accounts."

You'll need to include the Login block somewhere on your page. Menu location ( Administration -> Site building -> Blocks )

You'll also need to remove most rights for anonymous users, but you can grant them again when you're ready to launch the site to the general public. Menu location ( Administration -> User management -> Permissions )

Here's an example of permissions I used for an "intranet" site:

Anonymous:
- access site-wide contact form

Authenticated:
- access site-wide contact form
- access comments
- access content

JM

mkogel’s picture

mkogel commented

Thanks for the detailed instructions. This seems much easier than what I had in mind. I will try out and let you know. Thanks
M

I am not a developer so I need idiots guide sometimes