Putting your WordPress site into maintenance mode allows you to display a temporary landing page to visitors while you perform backend changes, safe from public view.
According to statistics from SeedProd, over 58% of WordPress users enable maintenance mode when modifying plugins, changing themes, or migrating their site.
Displaying a well-designed maintenance page that aligns with your brand provides a better user experience than showing website errors during this downtime.
In this comprehensive guide, we‘ll cover:
- Key reasons to use maintenance mode
- 2 easy methods to activate it
- Customizing your own maintenance page template
- Controlling access to your site
- Best practices for using maintenance mode
Top 5 Reasons to Put Your Site in Maintenance Mode
Before diving into how to enable maintenance mode, let‘s discuss why you should use it:
Prevent a Poor Visitor Experience – Displaying error messages or a broken site frustrates visitors. A customized maintenance page lets you display an on-brand notice with details of when your site will be back up.
Safeguard SEO – Maintenance mode prevents search engines from crawling and indexing broken pages which helps preserve your site‘s search visibility and ranking.
Enable Backend Access to Admins – While the public front-end is disabled, using maintenance mode allows you and other designated WordPress admins to still access the dashboard to work on the site backend.
Continue Tracking Key Analytics – Maintenance mode plugins give the option to enable your Google Analytics tracking code so you can monitor traffic during downtime.
Capture Leads – Take advantage of the visibility of your maintenance page to promote your email list, run a coupon giveaway, or otherwise generate leads. Over 32% of WordPress users leverage their maintenance mode page for lead generation.
Now that you know why you should leverage maintenance mode when modifying your WordPress site, let‘s go over how to actually enable it.
Method 1: Using the SeedProd Plugin (Recommended)
The most straight-forward approach to put your WordPress site into maintenance mode is by using the free SeedProd plugin.
Over 780,000+ websites rely on SeedProd for creating coming soon pages, building highly converting landing pages, and enabling maintenance mode.
Here‘s how to use SeedProd to easily setup maintenance mode on WordPress:
Step 1: Install and Activate SeedProd
First, install and activate the SeedProd plugin like any standard WordPress plugin.
No signup required to use the free features needed for maintenance mode.
Step 2: Create New Maintenance Page
Then under SeedProd → Pages, click Set up a Maintenance Mode Page in the right-side Maintenance Mode widget.
Alternatively, click Edit Page to modify the existing maintenance page.
This will launch SeedProd‘s visual page builder for designing your custom maintenance page template.
Step 3: Build Custom Maintenance Page
One of the most powerful features of SeedProd over other maintenance mode plugins is the ability to completely customize your page design:
Pick from beautifully designed templates tailored for maintenance mode – no design experience needed. We‘re using ‘Down for Maintenance‘ in this guide‘s screenshots.
Drag and drop additional elements like opt-in forms, images, custom HTML, social shares, and more to match your brand.
Modify text, colors, and fonts using an intuitive click-based editor.
This flexibility allows you to keep visitors engaged while your site is down through email signup incentives, links to your social profiles, apologies for the inconvenience, and details on when you expect to be back online.
Once happy with your design, click "Save" in the page builder editor to publish your custom maintenance page.
Step 4: Turn On Maintenance Mode
Lastly, with your branded maintenance page created, go to:
SeedProd → Pages → Maintenance Mode
Then toggle the switch to the "Active" position:
This will put your WordPress site into maintenance mode, restricting access to all front-end visitors and showing them the new maintenance page you created.
To disable maintenance mode, return to the same section and switch the toggle back off to the "Inactive" position.
Step 5: Control Access with SeedProd Pro
Upgrading to SeedProd Pro unlocks additional maintenance mode features like:
User Access Controls: Allow specific WordPress user roles like editors to access the backend while visitors see the maintenance page:
Bypass URLs: Whitelist certain pages or URLs like "/login" to exclude from maintenance mode restrictions.
Visitor Access Rules: Use cookies, passcodes, or other options to selectively allow visitors access while excluding others.
These enhanced controls provide flexibility in who you permit to access your site while it‘s supposedly "under maintenance" from the public perspective.
Method 2: Using the LightStart Plugin
If seeking a straightforward free maintenance mode plugin without the design flexibility of SeedProd, LightStart is a decent basic option.
To use LightStart for enabling maintenance mode:
Step 1: Install and Activate LightStart
Install the LightStart plugin through the standard WordPress plugin installer just as you would SeedProd or any other plugin.
Step 2: Pick Maintenance Template
Under Settings → LightStart, choose the included "Website is Under Maintenance" template:
This will automatically generate a simple no-frills maintenance page using LightStart‘s built-in template.
Step 3: Customize Maintenance Page
Click "View Page" after selecting the template to access the page editor.
Here you can make limited design customizations like:
- Modifying default text blocks
- Changing fonts and colors
- Adding logos and images
While lacking the drag and drop flexibility of SeedProd, you can create a presentable maintenance page through LightStart without coding.
Step 4: Configure Settings
Still on the Settings → LightStart screen, review options like:
- ✅ "Bypass for Search Bots" to avoid SEO impact
- Allowing backend dashboard access
- Other site controls while in maintenance mode
Step 5: Activate Maintenance Mode
On the same LightStart settings screen, toggle the switch into the "Activated" position:
Save changes and your WordPress site will now display the maintenance page to standard front-end visitors.
To deactivate, return and flip the toggle back to "Deactivated".
Developing an Effective Maintenance Page
Regardless of whether you leverage SeedProd, LightStart, or another plugin to enable maintenance mode on your WordPress site, use these best practices:
Do:
✅ Use an on-brand, professional design aligned with your overall site aesthetics
✅ Set proper visitor access expectations indicating when you‘ll be back online
✅ Offer alternatives like contacting via social media
✅ Promote your email list with incentives to capture leads
Avoid:
❌ Generically worded or poorly designed maintenance pages
❌ Failing to track analytics during maintenance periods
❌ Neglecting to inform search engines of temporary maintenance state
Implementing these tips ensures your overall user experience remains polished and conversion focused even when your site is down for maintenance.
Alternative Maintenance Mode Solutions
While dedicated maintenance mode plugins like SeedProd and LightStart represent the easiest way to get up and running with the feature, here are a couple alternatives worth mentioning:
Coming Soon Mode – Some WordPress hosts like SiteGround offer a temporary "Coming Soon Mode" with basic customization options while you get your initial site ready. These get disabled automatically once you publish homepage content.
Show Static HTML Page – You can manually create an HTML-based maintenance notice page then configure your server or CMS to display that static page when needed. However, this makes dynamically enabling/disabling more difficult.
Neither of these alternatives provide the same level of branding, customization, accessibility, or integration with WordPress that a dedicated plugin like SeedProd delivers.
But in some niche cases, particularly for quick short-term maintenance needs if overhauling an existing site, they can get the job done.
Ultimately when asking the question of how to put your WordPress site into maintenance mode – SeedProd and LightStart represent simple yet powerful paths to create and display customized maintenance pages during website downtime or major overhauls.
Let us know if you have any other questions!
