How to Enable a Maintenance Mode for Your WordPress Blog

One of the major shortcomings of the world’s most popular blogging platform is that webmasters do not generally have the freedom to design the website offline. Whenever you make any changes to on-page elements, such as widgets or themes, the changes take place immediately, and this can be problematic when you are experimenting with different layouts and/or visual styles, since visitors will see the changes as soon as you make them. For this reason, it is preferable to take your site down whenever you are performing maintenance or making major changes to the website. While you can also design a WordPress site offline by using a variety of solutions such as Instant WordPress, another option is to put your blog into maintenance mode.

 

One popular plugin which enables WordPress to display a single page telling your visitors that your website is temporarily down for maintenance is “Maintenance”. This plugin provides a customizable splash page which temporarily blocks access to your website. A default WordPress installation itself does not have this functionality.

 

Enble Mntnce Mode Wp

1. In your WordPress administrator dashboard, navigate to Plugins > Add New.
2. Search for the Maintenance plugin and click “Install Now” to download and install the plugin. Be sure to click “Activate Plugin” once this process is complete.
3. A new section will appear in the administrator dashboard side panel entitled “Maintenance”. Click on it to customize your maintenance page. By default, maintenance mode will be activated as soon as you active the plugin.
4. Customize the maintenance splash page by changing the details provided as required. You can also upload your company or website logo and add a background image. Click “Save Changes” to continue.
5. To see the maintenance mode in action, log out of your administrator dashboard and visit your WordPress site. By default, the login form should still appear on the maintenance page, allowing registered users and administrators to still log in to the administrator dashboard and view the website as normal. To remove this option, deselect the “Login On / Off” option on the Maintenance page in the administrator dashboard. You will still be able to log in as normal from your wp-admin page whether this option is turned on or not.
6. To turn maintenance mode off, simply return to the Maintenance page in the administrator dashboard and click the green button at the top of the page.
   Enble Mntnce Maintanence

A premium paid version of this plugin is also available, though most users will likely find the features provided by the free edition to be adequate.