A development site has been launched, but its search-engine visibility still reflects the preparation phase. WordPress provides a Reading setting that asks search engines not to index the site. Review it deliberately at launch without broadly exposing protected staging environments.
This setting is not access control. Draft material containing customer information needs authentication or another appropriate restriction.
Compare the setting with the delivered response
Open Reading settings in WordPress administration. Record the visibility option and establish whether you are editing production or staging. Save changes only after identifying the environment.
Then fetch a published page without signing in. Inspect robots metadata, response headers and robots.txt. An SEO plugin, theme or upstream server can add signals, so one WordPress setting does not establish what an external request receives.
Inspect another content type, such as a post as well as a standard page. It may use different templates or plugin rules. If noindex remains, identify its source rather than disabling every extension simultaneously on production.
Record the environment, time and response before and after the correction. Compare a Search Console live inspection with the indexability checker, which inspects signals currently delivered by the site.