Set up a professional temporary landing page, manage index priorities, and notify web visitors while your main site is under development.
Setting up a Coming Soon or Under Construction page for your website with 1-grid involves creating a temporary landing page to let visitors know your website is being developed. This placeholder page prevents public access to your backend files while your site is actively being built or tested on a web hosting server. It is also an excellent practice for parked domains until you are ready to launch your brand. This guide walks you through building a custom placeholder file, editing its content, and shifting server priorities using your .htaccess file.
Before You Begin
Before creating a placeholder page, make sure you meet the following baseline requirements:
- Access to your 1-grid Customer Zone login credentials.
- An active Linux web hosting package running a cPanel dashboard.
- Your domain name pointed correctly to your 1-grid hosting package.
💡 Context: When a visitor looks up your website domain name link, our high-speed server automatically searches your root folder tree lists for a default landing file. If you haven’t uploaded your final site yet, building a custom landing file acts as a protective shield, keeping your incomplete project pages masked while maintaining an online brand presence.
Follow These Steps
1. Log In to your 1-grid Customer Zone
Sign in to your 1-grid Customer Zone dashboard area using your registered account credentials.
2. Navigate to Your Web Hosting Package
On your dashboard, locate your hosting package and select View Details.
3. Open cPanel File Manager
Scroll down to your hosting action buttons and click Login to cPanel. Once your hosting control panel dashboard workspace environment initialises, locate the Files section block cluster panel and click File Manager.
4. Open Your Website’s Root Folder
In the left sidebar panel layout directory tree, double-click your primary website root container, which is named public_html.
Note: If you have secondary add-on domains, navigate into their specific assigned directory folder root instead.
5. Create a New Placeholder File
Click the + File (New File) icon link button located in the top menu layout strip. In the pop-up creation window prompt box, enter a distinct file name with an extension, such as underconstruction.html, and click Create New File.
6. Design and Edit the Placeholder Page Content
Highlight your newly created file row item inside your file manager explorer grid and click HTML Editor (or select Edit / Code Editor depending on your preference) from the top panel strip. Build a clean page layout, ensuring you apply these clear design best practices:
- Clear Messaging: Clearly communicate that your website is undergoing maintenance or being proudly built.
- Contact Information: Include a temporary customer care email or telephone number string so visitors can reach you for urgent assistance.
- Branding and Visuals: Match your primary brand identity using a simple colour theme and your official company logo graphic.
- Action: Click Save in the editor toolbar area when finished and close the screen box.
Understanding Default Page Server Priority
Web servers search for directory landing indicators using a strict, unaltered default hierarchy pattern. The standard pages all hosting servers look for, in order of execution priority, are:
- index.htm
- index.html
- index.php
- default.htm
If your root directory folder already contains an operational file named index.php from a WordPress installation, your new underconstruction.html file will be ignored. To make your placeholder visible without deleting your active website development data files, you must instruct the server to update its index priorities.
Changing the Default Index Page via .htaccess
To force your temporary under construction file to take absolute top priority over existing framework indices:
- Locate the file named .htaccess. Right-click the item row and select Edit.
- Paste the following precise directive script code at the very beginning of the configuration text box:
apache
# Alternate default index page priority definition
DirectoryIndex underconstruction.html index.htm index.html index.php default.htm
- Click Save Changes in the top-right toolbar section frame and exit.
💡 Tip: The server reads this line from left to right. It will now fetch underconstruction.html first. If that file is ever missing or deleted, it gracefully falls back down to check your next index scripts in sequence.
What Happens Next?
Once saved, server-level folder access definitions are applied instantly.
- Instant Protection Active: Launch an external incognito private tab window to test your live URL route. Public browsers will fetch your clean placeholder immediately.
- Unhindered Background Development: You can continue building, testing, and uploading your final site files inside alternative directory blocks without public web traffic looking at your incomplete designs.
Important Things to Know
- A Temporary Solution: Remember that an under construction landing setup is an emergency hold pattern; prioritise getting your main website live as soon as possible to keep your South African consumer base engaged.
- Zero Technical Destruction: Activating a temporary directory priority index configuration never modifies, purges, or deletes your background site databases or underlying CMS application scripts.
- Propagation Latency Check: If your domain name configuration was registered or pointed to our nameservers today, your placeholder may remain masked regionally until your ISP completes standard network DNS propagation loops.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Overlooking the default priority rule and assuming your placeholder file will auto-display when an index.php file exists.
- Renaming your primary website development index folders instead of updating the .htaccess command rule lines.
- Missing or mistyping the configuration syntax layout spacing within your .htaccess file, which causes immediate HTTP 500 errors.
- Uploading your new placeholder graphic assets or HTML files completely outside of the mandatory public_html root folder container.
- Forgetting to drop the DirectoryIndex text line later when you are finally ready to officially launch your live business platform.
If This Didn’t Work
If your browser views continue rendering your incomplete standard theme pages after completing your edits, completely clear your browser’s local history cache files or run a hard refresh loop to bypass persistent browser snapshot memory trees. Verify that the spelling inside your .htaccess directive matches your placeholder file filename exactly.
You’re Ready!
Your temporary website placeholder framework is completely live. Managing your visibility settings strategically lets you secure your brand’s digital reputation, capture customer enquiries during downtime, and finalise your web platforms with absolute peace of mind.
Related Articles
- How to Access cPanel with 1-grid
- How to Use File Manager in cPanel
- How to Speed Up Your Website with LiteSpeed Web Cache Manager
- Website Error Guides
Need Help?
If your .htaccess modifications trigger site-wide loading breaks or your HTML configurations throw file permissions blocks, contact us. Our Support Team is ready to provide guidance and support.
Before logging an assistance brief ticket, please prepare:
- Your primary domain name and active server service plan metrics.
- The exact text name assigned to your custom placeholder file.
- A screenshot of your current .htaccess text entries window view showing the directive.
- The complete text details of any active error messages displayed on your screen layout.