WordPress is a great tool. It has its own way of managing updates to your website – and will switch to maintenance mode automatically.  For the best user experience you should enable maintenance mode yourself.

How to Enable Maintenance Mode without a Plugin – method 1

Activating maintenance mode without a plugin is easy. First, open your FTP program and then navigate to the root folder of you WordPress install.

Then create a new file and change the name to .maintenance – WordPress looks for this file and automatically maintenance mode has been turned on.

Once you’re done, you just need to rename or delete the .maintenance file

Enable Maintenance mode & allow access to WP-Admin – method 2

The preferred option for maintenance is a bit more graceful. Any visitors to your site will see a short message and any logged in or Admin users will still have access.

This is probably the best solution – giving the most control to you the web developer.

So this time … create a new file and paste this code:

</p>
<p>&lt;?php function is<em>user</em>logged<em>in() {  $loggedin = false;  foreach ( (array) $</em>COOKIE as $cookie =&gt; $value ) {  if ( stristr($cookie, 'wordpress<em>logged</em>in<em>') )  $loggedin = true;  }  return $loggedin; } if ( ! stristr($</em>SERVER['REQUEST<em>URI'], '/wp-admin') &amp;&amp; ! stristr($</em>SERVER['REQUEST<em>URI'], '/wp-login.php') &amp;&amp; ! is</em>user<em>logged</em>in() )  $upgrading = time(); ?&gt;</p>
<p>

Then just save the file and rename it to  .maintenance as and when you need it.  You’ll have a great tool now that can protect your website while you tinker under the hood.

WordPress Maintenance Mode