Suspending Websites for Maintenance
If you want to shut down a site for maintenance and let your visitors know that it is temporarily unavailable and will be back online later, switch on the site maintenance mode. When a site is in the maintenance mode, the "503 Service Unavailable" error document is shown to website visitors instead of the actual site pages.
If your hosting plan provides the option to customize web server error documents (the "Custom error pages" option), then you can use File Manager to open and customize the error page: Instead of the "Service Temporarily Unavailable" message, you can write your own message like "The site is temporarily down for maintenance, it will be up soon."
When maintenance work is finished, switch the maintenance mode off for the site to make it available to the visitors.
To switch on the maintenance mode for a website:
- Go to the Websites & Domains tab.
- Click Website Maintenance Mode (in the Advanced Operations group).
- If you have several websites, locate the site you want to temporarily suspend, and click the corresponding Manage link.
- Select the Switch on the maintenance mode for website checkbox.
- Click OK.
If the custom error documents option is switched on for the site, then you can edit the "503 Service Temporarily Unavailable" document to include your own text. For information about customizing error pages, refer to the section Setting Up Custom Error Pages.
To switch off the maintenance mode and put a site back online:
- Go to the Websites & Domains tab.
- In the list of your websites, locate the website you want to put back online. It should be accompanied by the Switched off for maintenance status indicator.
- Click the corresponding Change link.
- Clear the Switch on the maintenance mode for website checkbox.
- Click OK.
