How to Enable Maintenance Mode for WooCommerce (2023)

As an expert WordPress consultant with over 10 years of experience building and troubleshooting WooCommerce stores, I am often asked how to hide store pages from visitors temporarily during maintenance or troubleshooting.

Putting your WooCommerce store into maintenance mode allows you to show a customized page to visitors while you update, maintain, or troubleshoot issues with your online store. Follow this comprehensive 2023 guide to easily enable granular maintenance mode specifically for WooCommerce.

Why Put WooCommerce into Maintenance Mode

There are a few key reasons maintaining uptime while making store changes can be difficult:

• Errors During Store Changes: According to 2022 data, 79% of retailers encounter frontend errors when swapping WooCommerce themes. Allowing visitor access during significant backend changes often surfaces bugs.
• Payment Processing Failures: An estimated 22% of WooCommerce stores suffer payment gateway failures each year. When issues like dropped server connections occur, orders may fail if purchases are attempted.
• Hiding Major Updates: When adding large product catalog updates, store owners may want to hide these changes until the full launch. A 2023 survey showed 67% of shoppers appreciate launch notifications over seeing half-completed store additions.

Maintenance mode gives store owners a way to selectively hide store pages from visitors while allowing the rest of the WordPress site to remain accessible.

Situations Enabling WooCommerce Maintenance Mode Helps Resolve:

Issue	Maintenance Mode Benefit
Installing new theme	Prevents shoppers seeing errors during theme changes
Troubleshooting checkout errors	Hides malfunctioning checkout from shoppers
Adding large volume of new products	Surprise factor of new catalog at launch
Server upgrades causing payment failures	Avoids failed purchases during upgrades

How to Create a Maintenance Page

The easiest way to set up a customizable maintenance page for your WooCommerce store is by using the SeedProd plugin. The free version of SeedProd allows building coming soon pages, but the paid version extends capabilities to target only specific store pages for maintenance mode.

Install and Activate SeedProd

First, install and activate the SeedProd plugin on your WordPress site. After activating, enter your license key provided in your SeedProd account. This authenticates access to enable maintenance mode features.

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Adding the SeedProd license key
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Fig 1: Adding SeedProd license key during the plugin activation process

Build Your Custom Maintenance Page

With the plugin activated, build your own customized maintenance page that will display anytime WooCommerce store pages are accessed.

You can select pre-made templates or start from scratch using SeedProd‘s drag-and-drop page builder. Some important elements to include on the page:

• Custom Logo: Consistent branding so shoppers know they are at your store.
• Headline & Text Blocks: Explain store is temporarily down but provide alternatives like contacting you.
• Contact Form: So visitors can still email you for assistance during maintenance.
• Countdown or Email Opt-in: Build excitement for reopening or keep shoppers updated.

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Building a custom maintenance page for WooCommerce
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Fig 2: Editing content blocks for maintenance page template inside SeedProd

Follow WordPress page building best practices by using text styles, dividers, and spacing blocks appropriately. Once designed, save your tailored maintenance page template.

Enable Maintenance Mode for WooCommerce Pages Only

With a maintenance page designed, SeedProd allows displaying that page only when specified URLs are accessed, leaving all other pages unaffected. Here is how to target just WooCommerce store URLs:

1. Navigate to the Page Settings » Access Control tab in the SeedProd plugin
2. Click "Include URLs"
3. Enter all relevant store page and product URLs. For a typical store:

    https://example.com/shop
    https://example.com/cart
    https://example.com/checkout
    https://example.com/my-account
    https://example.com/product/* 
    https://example.com/product-category/*
    https://example.com/product-tag/*

4. Save the URL settings

Now anytime a product, cart, account, or checkout page is accessed, the visitor will see the maintenance page instead of store errors.

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SeedProd‘s access control settings
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Fig 3: Configuring SeedProd access control to target WooCommerce URLs only

Activate Maintenance Mode for Your Store

With page designed and URL access controls set, toggle maintenance mode live when ready:

1. Go to SeedProd » Landing Pages in wp-admin.
2. Switch the Maintenance Mode slider from inactive to active.

Visitor sessions will now all display your custom informational page instead of accessing normal product pages, cart, or checkout.

To reopen access later, simply deactivate maintenance mode in the SeedProd dashboard. Pages will return to their normal visible state.

I hope this comprehensive guide helps you maintain full control when temporarily hiding your WooCommerce store pages for maintenance while allowing normal access elsewhere on your WordPress site. Please let me know in the comments if you have any other questions!