Sites sometimes need to go into the maintenance mode for some reason or the other. This is not a problem as long as your site is not live to the public. However for sites receiving heavy traffic, this is a problem. In order to prevent this potential traffic from seeing the broken version of the website, it is crucial that you employ a neat way to handle this. In WordPress, this is simplified by the use of a maintenance mode plugin.
In this article I’m going to talk about the Ultimate Maintenance Mode plugin which will redirect visitors to a temporary message, explaining that the site is down for maintenance. But the plugin allows admins to access the site and continue their maintenance activities.
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What Does the Ultimate Maintenance Mode Plugin Do?
This plugin basically helps stop people from accessing your site by replacing the homepage by a splash page which tells the visitor that the site is under maintenance.
This is great while going through routine maintenance or some kind of testing.
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How to Use the Ultimate Maintenance Mode Plugin?
1. The plugin provides you with ‘WYSIWYG’ editor to display a customized message. It means that all the information that you wish to show on the splash page can be written here. It’s a simple WordPress post editor interface. You can add images as per your choice.
2. You can also upload a Custom Background Image that will represent the website. You can upload any image you want but the size should not exceed 5MB. The under maintenance text will be displayed in a box above the background image. This is where you select the background Image.
I would like to mention here, that I could not upload the Custom Background Image image due to some unknown reason. It just did not display the background image for me. Maybe I should ask for some help or raise a support call!
3. You can work on the site in the meanwhile. While the site is under maintenance for visitors, the admin can access the site and do modifications.
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Warning
The one disadvantage I see, is that the plugin sends the entire site in the maintenance mode and not individual pages, which might be the requirement for some. There is a pro version also available for the plugin which probably overcomes this drawback, but I haven’t investigated it as yet.
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Should I Use the Ultimate Maintenance Mode Plugin?
Yes. Instead of leaving your site incomplete to visitors, go into a maintenance mode, and let your visitors see a “Under Maintenance” message. This plugin gracefully takes your site offline for maintenance. It is an extremely simple and easy to use plugin, and blends with any WordPress theme.
I would recommend this plugin to anyone who wishes to take their entire site off for maintenance purposes. What are your thoughts about this plugin? Do you recommend a better idea? Do let me know your ideas in the comment section below.
