How to Put Your WordPress Site in Maintenance Mode (With & Without a Plugin)

Do you want an easy way to enable and disable maintenance mode any time you need?

Maintenance mode will hide your site from visitors while you run updates or fix broken pages. You can carry out all sorts of tasks like tweaking website settings, changing your theme, or adding more plugins.

Without maintenance mode, visitors may see broken pages and have a bad experience with your site. So if you want to look professional, you need to set up a stunning landing page to display while your site is down.

In this easy guide, we’ll show you how to put your WordPress website in maintenance mode.

Why You Need a Maintenance Page on Your Site

Maintenance mode gives you the power to hide your site when things aren’t perfect. Maybe you have scheduled maintenance time or you found broken pages on your site that you need to fix.

Your site could be experiencing a server update from your WordPress hosting provider. These updates run in the background but could slow down page load speed. That means a bad user experience and nobody wants that for their website.

In worse cases, your site could be under attack by hackers. They could deface your site or try to steal info from users.

A maintenance page lets you hide your site temporarily.

In fact, there are all sorts of benefits to having a maintenance page set up. For instance, you can use maintenance mode to…

• hide broken pages from your visitors
• hide your site under construction
• redirect your visitors to another destination when they land on your site
• ensure rankings remain intact
• collect users’ email addresses
• notify all your subscribers as soon as your site is live again
• increase your social followers

Troubleshooting can be done with peace of mind knowing your site still looks professional.

And not just that, it’s also a great way to save your SEO by signaling search engines that your website is down for maintenance. So every time the search engine bots crawl your site, they will skip indexing any changes that look incomplete, ensuring that your SEO rankings remain intact.

There’s a default WordPress maintenance mode page that you can add to your website during downtime. But there’s nothing much you can do with it in terms of enhancing its visuals. And most users dislike this page because it’s very unprofessional.

But don’t worry. You don’t have to be stuck with this generic WP maintenance mode message anymore.

Enter SeedProd! This is a free coming soon and maintenance mode plugin for WordPress. It lets you set up beautiful landing pages and there’s an option to enable/disable maintenance mode with just a click.

You don’t need any technical know-how for this so it’s great for beginners too. It takes just 5 minutes to grab a template, customize it, and make it live.

To give you a taste of what it has to offer, here’s a sample of the page we’ll be creating in this step-by-step tutorial.

Keep in mind, there are dozens of page templates to choose from, so you can pick one that suits your purpose and business. The steps below will remain the same.

That said, let’s get started.

Enable Maintenance Mode With a Plugin – SeedProd

SeedProd is a fully responsive and super flexible WordPress plugin that lets you enable maintenance mode pages without coding a single line.

You can use this plugin to design a vibrant and engaging page for your visitors to let them know that your website is down for maintenance.

From adding your brand logo to customizing every bit of your page, everything is made so simple and easy with this plugin.

To engage visitors for longer, you can also add a video to this page. The plugin also supports various other elements on the page like an email form, countdown timer, social icons, CTAs, and more.

SeedProd offers a Lite version in the WordPress plugin repository that gives you the basic features you need for maintenance mode.

It also has a premium version with access to a powerful WordPress theme builder, WooCommerce features, and so much more.

Get Started with SeedProd Here

Having said that, let’s check out how to put your WordPress site into maintenance mode. Let’s begin.

Step 1: Install and Activate the SeedProd Plugin

First, you’ll need to install the SeedProd plugin from your WordPress dashboard. Never done that before? Follow our easy guide on how to install a plugin in WordPress.

Once the plugin is activated, you’ll have to validate your license key for the premium version. (Skip this if you’re using the free version). You can find the key in your SeedProd account created at the time of purchasing the product. Paste the key in the blank field and click on the check Verify Key box to validate it.

Once the license key is validated, you’re ready to start using the plugin.

Scroll down the page and click on the Create Your First Page button. This will take you to the SeedProd dashboard where you can start creating your page.

Step 2: Set up Maintenance Mode in WordPress

It’s now time to create your maintenance mode page. At the top of the SeedProd dashboard you’ll see 4 different pages you can create: coming soon page, maintenance mode page, login page, and 404 page.

Click on the Set up a Maintenance Mode Page to get started.

Step 3: Select Your Theme

SeedProd’s template library will open where you can select a theme for your maintenance mode page.

SeedProd offers more than 200 different fully customizable pre-built templates to choose from. You’ll notice a menu bar on top that lets you filter the templates by purpose. The maintenance mode template filter is already selected for you.

When you hover over a template, you’ll see options to preview or select it.

Once you choose a template, SeedProd will take you to the visual page builder where you can customize the design.

Step 4: Customize Your Maintenance Mode Page

In SeedProd’s visual builder, you’ll see it’s divided into two main sections. On the left is the taskbar with customization options. And on your right, you can edit and preview your page in real time.

You can customize any existing element on your page by clicking on it. For example, you can click on the headline to change the text, font size, alignment, and more.

You can also easily add new content to your maintenance mode page using the blocks on the left side of the screen.

SeedProd offers tons of ready-made landing page blocks including:

• Buttons
• Videos
• Contact Forms
• Email Optin/Subscription Forms
• Social Media Icons
• Countdown Timers
• Custom HTML
• And much more

Simply drag and drop the block you want onto your maintenance mode page. For example, you can add a countdown timer to your page to let visitors know when maintenance will be finished.

Again, you can click on the countdown timer to customize it. You can set the end date and time, choose the style, color, and more.

SeedProd also offers pre-built sections like FAQ, call to action, features, and others. These modules makes it easy to add more information to your maintenance mode page and keep your layout looking great.

We’ll add a testimonial section to showcase our best reviews. Under the Sections tab, choose Testimonials from the left menu. You can then choose the style for your review section. Hover over the style you like and click on the (+) Add button.

SeedProd will automatically add the section to your maintenance mode page. Then, you can select the section to customize the content.

Now we’re confident that you’ve got a good understanding of how the SeedProd builder works. You can explore more settings to change the logo, background image, social media icons, colors, fonts, and much more.

When you’re finished customizing your maintenance mode page, don’t forget to hit the Save button.

Step 5: Connect Your Email Marketing Service

SeedProd lets you connect the page to your email account so you can keep your users engaged even when your site is down.

To do this, you can add an optin form to your maintenance mode page. All you have to do is drag the Optin Form block onto the page.

Next, you’ll need to connect your email marketing service. Select the Connect tab at the top of your screen.

On this page, you can see popular email marketing providers like Constant Contact, AWeber, Drip, Mailchimp, and more.

In this section, you’ll also see options to connect to Zapier, Google Analytics, and Recaptcha. You may be interested in connecting to these services later.

For now, choose your email marketing provider, fill out your account details, and click the Connect button.

Now, when users submit their email addresses via your maintenance mode page, they’ll be automatically added to your email list.

You can use this feature to send them an automated email series, add them to your newsletter list, and so much more. You can also set up automated notifications for you and your team when someone submits the form.

Step 6: Check Mobile-Friendliness

Google prioritizes mobile-friendliness. If you want your website to rank on Google, you need to make sure everything about your website can be viewed on mobile.

SeedProd makes this super easy to do. First, every SeedProd template is automatically responsive so it’ll look good on any device.

To check this, click on the Mobile button at the bottom of the page.

Now you’ll see a preview of your site on a mobile device screen. You can make any changes you need here.

To go back to the desktop preview, just click on the mobile/desktop preview button again.

Step 7: Configure Maintenance Page Settings

Now your custom maintenance mode page is pretty much ready. You can configure a few important settings under the Page Settings tab.

The first tab is the General settings section. Here, you can choose a page title, set your page status, enable or disable redirect mode, and so on.

In the Access Control section, you can create a secret bypass URL to give specific people access to your site.

And in the SEO settings, you can optimize your maintenance page for SEO. If you’re a developer, you can add custom CSS in the Scripts tab.

Don’t forget to Save settings when you’re finished configuring these options in the plugin’s settings.

Step 8: Publish and Activate Your Maintenance Mode Page

You are now ready to add this page to your live site. For that, you’ll see two buttons at the top of the page. You can preview your page to make sure you’re happy with the design. Then click on the Save button to save your settings.

Note here that there’s also a dropdown option to save this design as a template that you can use later.

Now you need to enable maintenance mode to make this page live.

When you exit the builder by clicking on the ‘X’ at the top-right corner of the screen, you’ll see a prompt to enable maintenance mode.

You can activate it here and your site will be hidden behind the page you just created.

Now your maintenance mode page is set up for the future as well. This means you can enable or disable the maintenance mode page from your SeedProd dashboard at any time you want. Back on the Landing Pages tab, you’ll see a toggle switch for maintenance mode.

Whenever you need to display the maintenance page, all you have to do is hit this switch. When the switch is off, maintenance mode will be deactivated.

That’s it, you’ve learned how to put WordPress in maintenance mode.

Enable Maintenance Mode Without a Plugin

To use this manual method, you need basic knowledge of accessing the theme editor, file manager in your web host account, and how to edit/update files in WordPress.

We have created an easy code snippet that you can use to enable WordPress maintenance mode without a plugin.

You need to add the following code to your theme’s functions.php file or in a site-specific plugin:

function maintenance_mode() {

if ( !current_user_can( 'edit_themes' ) || !is_user_logged_in() ) {wp_die('Maintenance.');}

}
add_action('get_header', 'maintenance_mode');

Make sure you preview the frontend of this page to see that your site is working as expected. To disable the maintenance mode and allow users to access your website, simply comment out the last line like this:

// add_action();

If you’re not sure about editing backend WordPress files, it’s best to use a maintenance mode plugin like SeedProd. When you modify WordPress files like functions.php and .htaccess, a tiny misstep could break pages or even your whole website.

Once you have SeedProd on your site, you can use coming soon and maintenance mode any time you want. Plus, you can set up all sorts of landing pages including:

• Coming soon
• Sales
• Webinar
• Lead Squeeze
• Thank you
• Login
• 404

You can even access the theme builder and theme designs to create an entire website. See our full SeedProd Review and check out these guides for more detailed steps:

• How to Create a Lead Capture Page in WordPress
• How to Make the Perfect Thank You Page in WordPress
• How to Create a Dynamic Landing Page in WordPress

These tutorials will help you set up the pages you need for your site.