If you have the ability to set up sub domains on your hosting account, I always find it simple to set up a sub-domain such as: http://staging.<yoursite>.com and point it to a separate folder on your hosting package.
I generally set mine up like:
/ [root]
— /public [the site that visitors to your site see]
— /staging [your private testing section]
You would then make sure that your http://www.<yoursite>.com domain is configured to point at the /public folder and staging.<yoursite>.com subdomain is pointed at /staging.
This way, you can test away on your live environment and when you’re ready to launch, simply upload your site to the /public folder (or alternatively configure your http://www.<yoursite>.com domain to point at /staging – but semantically speaking this isn’t a great idea).
