How to Put WordPress in Maintenance Mode Safely and Quickly

Maintaining a professional and user-friendly website often involves updates, tweaks, or redesigns. But how do you ensure visitors don’t see a broken site during this process? The answer is simple: put your WordPress site in maintenance mode. Whether you’re a website owner or working with WordPress development experts, enabling WordPress maintenance mode ensures your visitors see a clean, professional message instead of an incomplete page.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to put WordPress in maintenance mode, with or without plugins, so you can keep your site polished and user-focused during updates.

What is WordPress Maintenance Mode?

WordPress Maintenance Mode is a temporary setting that restricts public access to your website while you make updates or changes. Instead of the usual content, visitors see a maintenance page or message, such as the default, “Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute.”

This mode is typically activated during essential tasks like updating core files, themes, or plugins. It’s also useful for more extensive work, such as redesigning your website, fixing critical errors, or configuring new features. By enabling maintenance mode, you ensure your visitors don’t encounter a broken or incomplete site.

A well-crafted maintenance page not only informs visitors about the temporary downtime but also conveys professionalism. It minimizes confusion and keeps users engaged, even when your site is undergoing changes.

Different Types of WordPress Maintenance Mode

These may sound new to you but, yes, types of maintenance mode in WordPress websites do exist. It depends on the practice you undertake to enable maintenance mode on site. Basically, there are three types of maintenance modes:

Let’s understand each of them in a more detailed version:

WordPress Default Maintenance Mode

This is the maintenance mode that WordPress activates automatically. Whenever you update any WordPress aspect such as theme, plugin, or core files this mode gets enabled instantly.

While conducting such practices, in the WordPress admin dashboard, you must have seen a message displaying ‘Enabling Maintenance Mode‘ – that is the default WordPress maintenance mode.

WordPress also ensures web visitors get uninterrupted by displaying a message stating ‘Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute‘. So that, the user doesn’t get confused or frustrated and also doesn’t lead to any sort of increased visitor bounce rate.

WordPress Manual Maintenance Mode

This involves manually creating a maintenance page or displaying a custom maintenance message on your website when the site is undergoing some editing or update.

It can be a custom HTML maintenance page that you upload to your server or a maintenance message you configure your server to display.

This method benefits with full control over the design and content of the maintenance page but also demands more technical expertise. If that doesn’t correspond to your proficiency, then you can also get help from dedicated WordPress developers.

WordPress Plugin Based Maintenance Mode

You have to check for the WordPress plugin specifically designed for maintenance mode. There are also several measures you should consider while choosing WordPress plugins such as its technical overview, active installations, and compatibility with the latest WordPress version.

These plugins offer a range of features, including countdown timers, email capture forms, scheduled maintenance, social media integration, and more. They provide a user-friendly way to create and manage maintenance mode pages and are suitable for users with various levels of technical expertise.

Thus, the choice of maintenance mode depends on your specific needs and technical proficiency. The default mode is suitable for automatic activation during updates, but it lacks customization options.

Manual maintenance mode provides full control but requires technical know-how, while plugin-based maintenance mode offers a user-friendly way to create and manage maintenance pages with a range of features and web editing possibilities.

How to Enable Maintenance Mode in WordPress Website?

Here we’ll cover both; Enabling maintenance mode without a plugin and using a maintenance mode plugin. Based on the timeline and customization requirements you can pick any of them and achieve it by following the steps below:

Enabling Maintenance Mode Without a Plugin

Enabling maintenance mode without a plugin involves manual setup. It gives you complete control over the maintenance page’s design and content. Here are the steps:

Step 1: Create a Maintenance Page

• Design an HTML maintenance page using your preferred IDE or code editor.
• Include elements such as a message explaining the maintenance, estimated downtime, and contact information.
• Save this HTML file with an easily recognizable name, e.g., ‘maintenance.html.’

Step 2: Upload the Maintenance Page

• Connect to your web server using an FTP Client or a file manager provided by your hosting control panel.
• Navigate to the root directory of your WordPress installation, usually ‘public_html‘ or a similar folder.
• Moreover, being a bit familiar with WordPress files and directory structure can help you a lot in each step including this method.

Step 3: Edit the .htaccess File

• If there isn’t already a `.htaccess` file in your WordPress root directory, you’ll need to create one.
• Create and open the `.htaccess` file with a text editor and add the following code at the top:

     RewriteEngine On
     RewriteBase /
     RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^Your_IP_Address$
     RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/maintenance.html$
     RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /maintenance.html [R=503,L]

• Replace `Your_IP_Address` with your actual IP address. This code redirects all visitors except you to the maintenance page.

Step 4: Activate Maintenance Mode

• To activate maintenance mode, upload the ‘maintenance.html’ page to your server.
• When you’re ready to initiate maintenance, rename or move the ‘index.php‘ file in your WordPress root directory (e.g., change it to ‘index_old.php‘).
• This step makes the server load the maintenance page instead of your WordPress site.

Step 5: Deactivate Maintenance Mode

• Just like activating, deactivating maintenance mode is also important to bring your site back online.
• You can restore the ‘index.php‘ file by renaming or moving it back to its original name.
• Thus, this manual method provides complete control over your maintenance page but also requires technical expertise.
• Woefully, even if you face the ‘WordPress stuck in maintenance mode‘ issue then also nothing to worry about as it is one of the most common WordPress errors.
• You can prevent this by simply clearing WordPress cache and ensuring the file permissions.

Enabling Maintenance Mode With the Maintenance Mode Plugin

In this WordPress tutorial, we’ll be considering the use of the SeedProd plugin –  a popular maintenance plugin that simplifies the process of setting up a maintenance page in WordPress. Here’s how to use it:

Step 1: Install and Activate the SeedProd Plugin

• Go to your WordPress dashboard.
• Navigate to ‘Plugins‘ and click on ‘Add New.’
• Search for ‘SeedProd‘ and conduct the standard WordPress plugin installation process.
• Once installed, click on the ‘Activate‘ button.

Step 2: Configure SeedProd Settings

• After activation, go to ‘SeedProd‘ in your WordPress dashboard.
• Choose the ‘Maintenance‘ mode.

Step 3: Customize Your Maintenance Page

• SeedProd provides a user-friendly visual editor, which you can consider as a page builder in the maintenance page.
• Once, you are navigated to this page – there you’ll need to see a stripe in which you can add your ’email address’ and unlock free WordPress maintenance templates.
• If you want to create an entire page according to you then you can select the ‘Blank template‘ present at the very first of all templates.
• Using any of them – you can add text, images, logos, countdown timers, and more.
• It also offers to configure settings such as access control, SEO settings, and social media integration.

Step 4: Activate Maintenance Mode

• Make sure, you’ve entered all the details required by web visitors, and also a support mail or social where they can drop any web/service related query.
• Once you’re done and satisfied with your maintenance page’s design and settings, make sure you save changes.
• Then, click the ‘Enable Maintenance Mode‘ button present on the top-right corner of the page editor.

Step 5: Deactivate Maintenance Mode

• When you’re done with your maintenance tasks, return to the SeedProd settings and disable maintenance mode with a simple toggle switch.
• Using the SeedProd plugin streamlines the process of creating and managing your maintenance page, making it accessible to users with varying levels of technical expertise.

FAQs About Putting WordPress Site in Maintenance Mode

Conclusion

Putting your WordPress site in maintenance mode is a simple yet effective way to ensure your visitors don’t encounter broken pages or errors during updates or redesigns. Whether you use a plugin or handle it manually, maintenance mode helps you maintain professionalism and protect your SEO rankings while keeping the backend accessible for changes.

By displaying a well-crafted maintenance message, you can inform your audience, minimize confusion, and maintain trust during downtime. For businesses looking to streamline such processes, working with WordPress development services ensures smooth updates and a flawless user experience.

Next time your site needs updates, don’t hesitate to use maintenance mode for a smooth and hassle-free process. Even small steps like this can make a big difference in providing a seamless online experience.