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I find myself migrating a static site to a WordPress-based website fairly frequently these days. Once I've finished development of the WordPress website on a test server, I then want to install it on the current website domain, but without affecting the old static site- until the site goes live.

My idea is to move the current non-WordPress website to a folder /old/ and get all requests to rewrite to this folder (and so for SEO purposes keeping all the urls the same).

To allow myself and other authorized people through I want to check for a cookie (that will be set via a simple "login" php file since I can't rely on static IP addresses) or if the current date and time is after the live date then let the WordPress rewrite rules take their course to give access to the WordPress website.

This will also allow me to add a simple countdown timer on the current or old site after which the new site will go live automatically at live date.

My simple login.php script is like this:

<?php
setcookie("login", "loggedin", time()+3600,"/");
?>
<h3>Welcome, you are logged in</h3>
<p><a href="/">Click here to visit the home page</a></p>

I thought the following might be the best way to acheive this, but it doesn't work (I get a Internal Server Error). The first section checks to see if the login cookie exists and if it doesn't and the current date and time is before 8pm on July 20 2012 it will rewrite all requests to the /old/ folder. I've modified the WordPress rewrite section to exclude the /old/ folder.

RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} !^.*login.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{TIME} < 20120720200000
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/old/
RewriteRule (.*) http://domain.com/old/$1 [L]

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/(old/.*)$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

Can someone help me with what I want to achieve?

iagdotme
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  • What do your apache logs say when you get the 503 error? – Jenny D Jul 15 '12 at 09:58
  • Good point, I've not had root access as my server is fully managed. My host is in the process of giving me root access so will tell you my findings once I'm in. – iagdotme Jul 15 '12 at 17:05

2 Answers2

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The RewriteCond directive takes 2 arguments, but you are giving it 3 when comparing %{TIME} and that's causing apache to return a 500 server error.. If you look at the lexicographical comparisons in RewriteCond, there can't be a space after the comparitor (mod_rewrite is kind of dumb like that). So that line needs to look like this:

# no space here -----V
RewriteCond %{TIME} <20120720200000

That should deal with the 500 server error.

The other thing about your rules is that the rule's target, http://domain.com/old/$1, will cause apache to 302 redirect because you are including the http://domain.com in the target. If you want it to rewrite internally (so the URL in the browser's address bar doesn't change), you need to remove that bit.

Jon Lin
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  • Thanks so much, Jon! I made the changes and it works perfectly. I've added this to my latest blog post on Tips and Hacks for WordPress and credited you - http://iag.me/webdev/wordpress-hacks-and-tips-2/ – iagdotme Jul 16 '12 at 15:31
  • @iagdotme Glad you got that working, and thanks for the mention – Jon Lin Jul 16 '12 at 15:40
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A simpler way would be to install plugin called Maintenance mode

Then create a 503.php for the theme.

add this to the beginning of the file:

<?php if (!is_user_logged_in())
{
    header("Location: http://example.com/old");
}
else
{
  //WHATEVER YOU LIKE
}?>

That way, logged in users can browse the WP-site, and others will get redirected to the /old website.

users must login beforehand @ http://example.com/wp-login.php

Sibin Grasic
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  • A good idea, but it isn't going to help in my case. I want to be able to test the WordPress site both as a logged-in user and logged-out. This is because the site has a members' only plugin which blocks access to certain content. I wouldn't be able to test this if I only allow access to the WP site to logged in users. I really want to try and get the solution I posted above to work. – iagdotme Jul 15 '12 at 17:07