When you need to switch temporarily offline your website to update your WordPress, your plugins or everything else you need to use the Maintenance Mode function.
But what is the Maintenance Mode page exactly? Sometimes it is used just to communicate to your visitors that your website is temporarily offline. It says: ehy, we are working hard here. We’ll be back soon!
Well, not bad. Of course it’s better than a blank page. But what if all the traffic that arrives on the page was redirected to a different type of communication? What if we helped all users to keep in touch with our website instead of send them away?
That’s what we did! We just released a super WordPress plugin that allows you to enable the Maintenance Mode and it helps you to:
Let your users know the website is in maintenance
Make lead generation
Launch products and services with a page that create expectation
The WordPress plugin is released for free and you can download it right now. Let me show you how to use and configure it.
INSTALLATION AND CONFIGURATION.
The plugin can be installed easily. Once you installed it, you just need to head your browser to Appearence -> Maintenance Mode and tick the Enable Maintenance Mode option.
Once you saved the settings the website will be available only for the Administrators of the website. The other user will see a splash page in which they will be informed of the temporary unavailability of the website.
You may ask yourself: Cool! But how can I fit the plugin to my needs?
It’s really easy! The plugin is fully customizable with your informations. For example you are able to customize the logo, to switch our mascotte Walter with another image, customize the text of the page, customize the bacgkound and many other things that I’m gonna explain you step by step.
The plugin configuration page is split in 5 tabs as you can see from the screen below:
Let’s see together what you can customize in each single tab.
General
General Settings
Enable Maintenance Mode
Enable the plugin
Roles
The user roles enabled to see the frontend. Check a role to enable it to show the website with
maintenance mode active.
Message
The message displayed. You can also use HTML code.
Custom style
Insert here your custom CSS style.
Mascotte
If you want, you can set here a mascotte image to show above the main box, in the right side.
Typography
Title font of message
Choose the font type, size and color for the titles inside the message text.
Paragraph font of message
Choose the font type, size and color for the paragraphs inside the message text.
Colors
Border top color
Choose the color for the big border top of the main box.
Background
Background Settings
Background image
Upload or choose from your media library the background image
Background Color
Choose a background color
Background Repeat
Select the repeat mode for the background image.
Background Position
Select the position for the background image.
Background Attachment
Select the attachment for the background image.
Logo
Customize the logo
Logo Settings
Logo image
Upload or choose from your media library the logo image
Logo tagline
Set the tagline to show below the logo image
Logo tagline font
Choose the font type, size and color for the tagline text.
Newsletter
All options to configure the newsletter form of the maintenance mode page. The options below allow you to link the newsletter form to an external service. You only need to analyze the external service example form and then configure each information in the options below.
Newsletter
Enable Newsletter form
Choose if you want to enable the newsletter form in the maintenance mode page.
Newsletter Email Font
Choose the font type, size and color for the email input field.
Newsletter Submit Font
Choose the font type, size and color for the email submit.
Newsletter submit background
The submit button background.
Newsletter submit hover background
The submit button hover background.
Title
The title displayed above the newsletter form.
Form configuration
Action URL
Set the action url of the form.
Form method
Set the method for the form request (POST or GET).
“Email” field label
The label for the email field
“Email” field name
The “name” attribute for the email field
Submit button label
The label for the submit button
Newsletter Hidden fields
Set the hidden fields to include in the form. Use the form: field1=value1&field2=value2&field3=value3
Socials
Socials
Facebook
Set the URL of your facebook profile
Twitter
Set the URL of your twitter profile
Google+
Set the URL of your Google+ profile
Youtube
Set the URL of your youtube profile
RSS
Set the URL of your RSS feed
Skype
Set the username of your skype account
Email
Write here your email address
Behance
Set the URL of your Behance profile
Dribble
Set the URL of your dribble profile
FlickR
Set the URL of your Flickr profile
Instagram
Set the URL of your instagram profile
Pinterest
Set the URL of your Pinterest profile
Tumblr
Set the URL of your Tumblr profile
LinkedIn
Set the URL of your LinkedIn profile
WANT TO INCLUDE THE PLUGIN IN YOUR THEME AND CONFIGURE IT?
If all the settings provided from the Maintenance Mode plugin seem not enough for you, don’t worry, we have another surprise for you!
In case you want to completely customize the plugin template you can do that in an easy way. Read on to learn how to do that.
In order to customize the stylesheet you just need to create a maintenance.css file within your root theme folder. Automatically the plugin will load this stylesheet instead of the original file.
If you need to customize the HTMl template you need to copy the maintenance.php file located within the templates folder of the plugin and paste it within the root theme folder. In this way you’ll be able to change everything you want in this file.
Conclusions
If you’re looking for an easy way to switch your webiste in Maintenance Mode now you can use our YITH Maintenance Mode free plugin. You just need a few clicks, what are you waiting for?