The Core: Tips, Tricks & TutorialsSetting a Maintenance Page
One of the first things you should do before starting to work on your website (built on our The Core multi-purpose WordPress theme) is to set an under construction page.
With other themes, you’ll need to install a WordPress maintenance mode plugin, but there is not need for that here since our The Core theme comes with this functionality out of the box.
This will let you take your time to work on your website without any visitors viewing your work in progress. Moreover, the under maintenance will enable you to create some buzz around the launch of your website.
How to enable maintenance mode
A coming soon page is basically a page that will be displayed to all the users that try to access your website and are not logged into the WordPress admin. In order to enable it you need to do two things:
1. Create the actual page
2. Activating the maintenance page
Let’s break them down one by one:
1. How to create a maintenance page
Keep in mind that any page on your website can be set as a maintenance page. So in order to create this page you just go to Pages > Add New and start creating a page as you normally would using our visual drag & drop page builder.
We’ve covered how to use the visual page builder in a previous article last week. This article shows you the basics on how to create pages using the structure elements (columns and sections) and content elements (aka shortcodes).
In the case of a coming soon page (or maintenance page), it would be a good idea to use a countdown shortcode, maybe a contact form shortcode and definitely some links to your social profiles.
Here is what we came up with just by playing around a bit (this page is included as a Coming Soon page in the main demo content theme from The Core):
(Tip: Click on the image to view the full page)
Keep in mind: When you create and test the page don’t mind the header and footer, they will automatically disappear once you set the page as a maintenance page.
2. How to activate the maintenance page
You have created a page called Maintenance (or Coming Soon) but that is not enough. You need to actually enable it as a maintenance page.
To do this go to Appearance > Theme Settings > General. On this page scroll down and find the Coming soon / Maintenance Page option.
By default, the maintenance option is set to NO. Select YES and choose the page you just created as your maintenance page from the list. Don’t forget to hit the Save button at the bottom of the page. Done, your website is under construction, you can now start working on your website.
Keep in mind: In order to make your website accessible again you need to manually disable the maintenance page from the admin. Test if it works by logging out and then try to access your website.
Conclusion
Now that I’ve finished this article I realize that it might look more complicated than it actually is. You basically create a page and set it as a maintenance page. Anyway, hope you find this article helpful. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.
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