Maintenance mode Print

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.

Switching on the maintenance mode

Your WordPress website enters maintenance mode automatically when you are:

• Upgrading your WordPress instance.
• Synchronizing WordPress instances via WordPress Toolkit.

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:

1. Go to Websites & Domains > WordPress and click the name of the WordPress instance you want to put into maintenance mode.
2. In the Developer tools section, click the change link next to Maintenance mode.
3. Select the Enabled radio button in the Maintenance mode section, and click OK.

To take your website out of maintenance mode, select the Disabled radio button, and click OK.

Customizing the maintenance screen webpage

Plesk WordPress Toolkit allows you to change certain attributes of the maintenance screen webpage to make it more informative:

• Change the text displayed on the maintenance screen.
• Add a countdown timer.
• Provide links to social network pages.

To customize the maintenance screen webpage:

1. Go to Websites & Domains > WordPress and click the name of the WordPress instance whose maintenance screen webpage you want to customize.
2. In the Developer tools section, click the change link next to Maintenance mode.
3. In the Screen Text section, you can change the text displayed. Use HTML tags to format the text's appearance.
4. In the Timer section, you can set up and switch on the countdown timer that will be displayed on the maintenance screen.

   Note: The timer is only meant to inform the 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 it manually.

5. In the Social Network Links section, provide or remove links to social network pages.
6. Click OK.

If you have coding skills, you can customize the maintenance screen webpage beyond the options described above. To do so, click the template link at the top of the screen and change the template of the maintenance screen webpage.

If necessary, you can always restore the template by clicking the restore link at the top of the screen.