New websites on WordPress.com will display a “Coming Soon” page by default, so your unfinished site won’t be visible to the public until you launch it. This guide explains how to show the “Coming Soon” page and share a preview link while you are working on your site.
To set your website to display a “Coming Soon” page, follow these steps:
- Visit your site’s dashboard.
- Navigate to Settings → Reading.
- Scroll to the Site Visibility section.
- Select the “Coming Soon” option.
- If you do not see the “Coming Soon” option, you have yet to launch your site.
- Click the “Save Changes” button at the bottom of the page.
Members of the public can visit your website, but they will see only the following “Coming Soon” page, indicating your site is a work in progress:
While your site is in “Coming Soon” mode, you can share it with select people to review, enabling you to show off your work-in-progress and get feedback while you continue to work on the website.
This section of the guide applies to sites with the WordPress.com Business and Commerce plan. If you have a Business plan, make sure to activate it. For free sites and sites on the Personal and Premium plans, upgrade your plan to access this feature.
To create a preview link, follow the below steps:
- Set your site’s visibility to coming soon, using the steps in the first section of this guide.
- Once you have clicked the “Save Changes” button, you will have the option to enable site sharing.
- Toggle the option on to “Share site”
- Click the “Copy URL to Clipboard” button to copy the link you can share with your collaborators.
To turn off the “Coming Soon” page, take the following steps:
- Visit your site’s dashboard.
- Navigate to Settings → Reading.
- Scroll to the Site Visibility section.
- Select either the Public or Private options.
- Click the “Save Changes” button at the bottom of the page.
To make your own ‘Under Construction’ or ‘Maintenance’ page instead of the blue WordPress.com option, you can install a plugin that provides this option. Search the plugin repository for “maintenance” to choose from many options.
