Maintenance Mode

This plugin is based on an older version of the “Maintenance Redirect” plugin developed by Jack Finch and Peter Hardy-vanDoorn.

Allows you to specify a maintenance mode message or HTML page for your site as well as configure settings to allow specific users to bypass the maintenance mode functionality in order to preview the site prior to public launch, etc.

Any logged in user with WordPress administrator privileges will be allowed to view the site regardless of the settings in the plugin. The exact privilege can be set using a filter hook – see FAQs.

The behaviour of this can be enabled or disabled at any time without losing any of settings configured in its settings pane. However, deactivating the plugin is recommended versus having it activated while disabled.

Functionality to exclude pages from maintenance mode, so only the selected pages will be visible.

When redirect is enabled it can send 2 different header types. “200 OK” is best used for when the site is under development and “503 Service Temporarily Unavailable” is best for when the site is temporarily taken offline for small amendments. If used for a long period of time, 503 can damage your Google ranking.

A list of IP addresses can be set up to completely bypass maintenance mode. This option is useful when needing to allow a client’s entire office to access the site while in maintenance mode without needing to maintain individual access keys.

Access keys work by creating a key on the user’s computer that will be checked against when maintenance mode is active. When a new key is created, a link to create the access key cookie will be emailed to the email address provided. Access can then be revoked either by disabling or deleting the key.

This plugin allows four methods of notifying users that a site is undergoing maintenance:

1. They can be presented with a message using WordPress’s wp_die() function which is core function of WordPress, which makes this plugin feel and work as a part of WordPress core.
2. They can be presented with a message on a page created with the style of the current template.
3. They can be presented with a custom HMTL page.
4. They can be redirected to a static page or external URL.