How to enable WordPress maintenance mode or coming soon mode

Maintenance mode, also known as coming soon mode, prevents access to all pages and posts on the site unless the visitor is logged in.

Built in Maintenance Mode

WordPress does technically have a built in maintenance mode, but it’s not particularly user friendly as it wasn’t intended to be used by end users. It automatically uses this mode when updating plugins and themes.

To use it yourself, use the Plesk File Manager to create a file called .maintenance in your web root folder (same place wp- files are located). To re-enable the site, remove the file.

Don’t worry though, there are some easier to use options! Some plugins have this feature built in, and so we recommend using it, if you already have one of those plugins active. Otherwise a dedicated coming soon plugin will do the trick.

WooCommerce Coming Soon Mode

If you already have WooCommerce installed, whether with an active store or not, you can take advantage of its built Coming Soon mode, which is new as of verison 9.1. To activate it go to WooCommerce > Settings > Advanced and look for Site Visibility Badge and enable it. Then head to WooCommerce > Settings > Site Visibility to control it.

More details on how it works in the WooCommerce documentation.

BeaverBuilder Power Pack Maintenance Mode

If your site was built with BeaverBuilder (we love BeaverBuilder around here) and utilizes the module expansion called PowerPack, you can enable maintenance mode with these steps:

1. Create your maintenance template by going to BeaverBuilder > Tempaltes > Add New. Design your template or use one of the pre-built ones.
2. Once you have your intended page template, go to Settings > PowerPack > Maintenance Mode
3. Choose Enable > Yes
4. Select your newly built template (from step 1) in the provided list and configure the rest as you’d like it

Dedicated WordPress Plugins for enabling Maintenance Mode

We’ve used a number of different plugins for this in the past, and honestly just about any one of them will do the trick. The two most recent ones we use for WordPress are:

• Under Construction by WebFactory Ltd. There’s a free and paid version, though the free version should work well for most people.
• Coming Soon by SeedProd

Other web apps will probably either have a similar function built in, or plugins just like these ones available to use. Check their documentation and plugin/extension repository for more info!