Coming Soon

Shows a holding page to the public while a site is being built, and gives the client a preview link that works without a WordPress login.

Free

Available

Version 1.1.0 · GPL-2.0-or-later

What it does

Switch it on and the public sees one self-contained page — your heading, your message, your image and your colours, and nothing of ours. Anyone logged in carries on seeing the real site.

The holding page is served as 503 Service Unavailable with Retry-After and X-Robots-Tag: noindex, and robots.txt is served as Disallow: / while it is on, which is what keeps a half-built site out of the search index. It can be switched to an ordinary 200 response on the settings screen. Feeds, sitemaps and the REST API can be closed to the public as well — without that, a holding page hides your pages while the REST API still serves their titles and their content.

The client gets a preview link rather than a login. Opening it once remembers that browser for a month, and regenerating the link revokes every link already sent. Your login, the block editor, WP-Cron and form endpoints are left alone. Everything is on one screen at Settings → Coming Soon, and the state can be pinned from wp-config.php with define( 'AX_COMING_SOON', true ) — the constant wins in both directions.

The holding page makes no outbound HTTP request and collects nothing; the only request the plugin makes is its twice-daily update check. There is no email capture, no countdown, no template gallery and no analytics.

What free means here

  • The plugin itself, under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later. Use it on as many sites as you like.
  • New versions as and when it needs one, in Dashboard → Updates like any other plugin, with no key. If we look after your site, we install them with the rest of your updates.
  • Bug reports are read and welcome by email. Free plugins carry no support commitment — support in the price is what the paid listings are for.

What it does not do

  • Files are not protected. A direct link to something in your uploads folder still works, because serving a file never runs WordPress. That takes a server rule.
  • A real robots.txt file in your web root wins over the one WordPress generates. If you have one, you have to edit it yourself.
  • While it answers 503, uptime monitors and Search Console report the site as down. That is what a 503 says; switch the setting to 200 if it matters more than the indexing.
  • It is a holding page, not access control. Anyone holding the preview link can see the site, and confidential material should not be sitting on a public server in the first place.
  • Single site only. It is not multisite-aware.

Requirements

WordPress
6.5 or later (tested to 7.1)
PHP
8.1 or later

Version and changelog

1.1.0 20 October 2026

  • New versions now appear in Dashboard → Updates like any other plugin, with no key needed. No change to what the plugin does.

1.0.3 22 September 2026

  • Settings screen copy only, no change in behaviour. The preview link now sits directly under the on/off switch rather than at the foot of the page, its label says what it does (“Share the site without a login”) rather than who it is for, and the help text names partners and reviewers as well as clients. The intro now states who bypasses the holding page when logged in.
  • Corrects the internal version constant, which 1.0.2 left at 1.0.1, so the admin stylesheet cache-busts properly.

1.0.2 15 September 2026

  • No functional change. Re-released because the published 1.0.1 zip carried the old Plugin URI and Update URI, and shipped three development files that belong in .distignore. If you are running 1.0.1, this is the same plugin with the correct header.

1.0.1 10 September 2026

  • The real site, served to someone holding a preview link, is now marked not cacheable — a page cache that could not see the preview cookie could otherwise store it and serve it to the public.
  • The state-changed hook fires on the first save of a fresh install too, which WordPress routes through add_option() rather than update_option().

1.0.0 10 September 2026

  • First release: holding page with heading, message and image; 503 with noindex and a Disallow robots.txt; optional closing of feeds, sitemaps and the REST API; and a client preview link that needs no login.

Getting it

Coming Soon is free and GPL-licensed. Sign in to your account to get the zip, then install it from Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin in wp-admin and activate it. It needs no licence key — the sign-in is only so the download is not open to every bot on the internet. After that, new versions appear in Dashboard → Updates like any other plugin.

If we already look after your site, you do not need to do any of that — ask your usual contact and we install it, and new versions arrive with the rest of your updates. Anything wrong with it goes to [email protected], where it is read, though a free plugin carries no support commitment.

Download

Coming Soon 1.1.0

Sign in to download

GPL-2.0-or-later · free plugins are listed in every account

No account? Write to [email protected].