[Niki]

Hi Suzanne. The best way is to build your new site in a sub-folder on your hosting account.

So if your hosting has a CPanel – then use the installation software (Softaculous/Installatron) to install WP in a subfolder called new-site – and start building there.

** And, one of the first things you should do is add a “Website is coming soon” plugin by Seedprod. That way the site is hidden from being found by the public while you are working on it.

By using the installer software – it will make moving the site to the main domain really simple, because they allow you to move or clone WordPress sites with a single click

Let me know if that works.

[Niki]

An extra consideration I forgot to mention earlier is that if you are building out a new website – you’ll want to make note of all of your pages/URLs from the original site. And you will want to see if it is possible to match those exact URLs within the new WordPress site page-links (perma-links).

If it is not possible to have the exact link (some old links have .html or .php at the end of the URL) – then you’ll want to add a plugin that allows a redirect from the old link to the new link. This will ensure that you do not lose your search ranks if people have bookmarked old link locations