

Ways to protect an alpha site - throwaway209

Hi,
  I am currently working on a website but now, it is currently in pre-alpha stage and so I do not want people to sign up. Is there any way to avoid people accidentally signing other than obscuring the sign up button/link?<p>Thanks
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coderdude
As aheilbut stated you can use .htaccess to rewrite the destination if the
request matches /signup. This question is highly dependent on your backend. If
you're using a framework that allows you to explicitly define the URLs in your
app then you can just comment that line out. You could also try triggering a
3xx to redirect them to the homepage upon requesting that page.

Really though, if your site is pre-alpha and if you don't want people to be on
it to begin with you should have your entire site blocked by at least basic
authentication. <http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/programs/htpasswd.html>

Any host worth paying will have some kind of option for "password protecting a
directory."

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jim_h
You could just let them sign up, but do not activate their account. Say
something like 'only select/random accounts' will be activated, if they're not
activated you could keep their emails and send them a reminder when you are
ready for them to use your site.

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r3demon
Charge them $100 for a sign-up or make it look like that.

~~~
throwaway209
:D

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aheilbut
.htaccess?

