When a WordPress website enters maintenance mode, the website’s content is hidden from visitors without being changed or otherwise affected. Visitors accessing your website when it is in maintenance mode see a maintenance screen webpage instead of the website content.
Turning on the maintenance mode
Your WordPress website enters maintenance mode automatically when you are:
- Upgrading your WordPress installation.
- Copying data from one WordPress installation to another.
If you are making changes to your website and want to temporarily hide it from visitors, you can manually put it into maintenance mode.
To put a WordPress website into maintenance mode:
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Go to WordPress and choose the WordPress installation you want to put into maintenance mode.
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Turn on “Maintenance mode” on the installation card.
To take your website out of maintenance mode, turn off “Maintenance mode”.
Customizing the maintenance page
With WordPress Toolkit, you can change certain attributes of the maintenance page to make it more informative. For example, you can:
- Change the text displayed on the maintenance page.
- Add a countdown timer.
- Provide or remove links to social network pages.
To customize the maintenance page:
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Go to WordPress, choose the WordPress installation whose maintenance page you want to customize, and then click the
icon next to “Maintenance mode” on the installation card. -
In the “Screen Text” section, you can change the text displayed. Use HTML tags to format the text’s appearance.
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In the “Timer” section, you can set up and turn on the countdown timer, which will be displayed on the maintenance page.
Note: The timer is only meant to inform visitors about the estimated duration of the remaining downtime. Your website is not taken out of maintenance when the countdown is finished; you must do that manually. -
In the “Social Network Links” section, provide or remove links to social network pages (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram).
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(Optional) To see how the configured maintenance page looks, click Preview.
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When you are satisfied with the changes made to the maintenance page, click OK.
If you have coding skills, you can customize the maintenance page beyond the options described above. You can do this for a particular WordPress website or for all WordPress websites hosted on the server.
To customize the maintenance page for a particular website:
- Go to WordPress, choose the WordPress installation whose maintenance page you want to customize, and then click the icon next to “Maintenance mode” on the installation card.
- Click Customize and edit the maintenance page template in Code Editor.
- Click OK.