The way I work around a hosting limitation similar to what you describe is to develop the temp and permanent sites in different directories. For example one I am doing now has a “start” and a “final” directory I created in the html root. The start directory has a WP install. When it was ready, I just moved the WP index.php file from yourdomain.com/start to the root directory following the instructions from the Settings>General page in the WP Admin panel. This then became the temp landing page for yourdomain/com. And then I am still able to work on what will be the final site from the yourdomain.com/final directory. When the final site is ready to go live I just rename the index.php file from the temp site and move the needed files from the final site into the root directory.

I am not sure this is the same as how you would do it on your particular host but if it is not or if you have questions feel free to email me. There is usually way to do it.

One thing I am worried about is that from talking to my host it appears that if I want anything temporary I have to convert the url to live and build the new site in live mode as well. I don’t know if this is a host specific issue in that some hosts allow you to have a site in a testing area and still be able to have the url live so a temporary landing page can be published… and some don’t allow this or not.

Any help would be gratefully received as I have spent ages trying to find info on how to approach temporary pages in an SEO friendly manner and this post is by far the most helpful.