How to put magento in maintenance

Question

Is it possible to put a magento site under an maintenance flag so that visitors will get a message that the site is under construction? I can\'t find this setting in the admin a

Answer 1

I followed this tutorial http://magentoexplorer.com/how-to-show-and-customize-magento-maintenance-mode-page to enable maintenance mode page in Magento, you need to create and upload maintenance.flag file to Magento root folder, however there are some more step for a good Maintenance mode like.

1. Add exception during maintenance (allow specific IP to visit your site during maintenance). In index.php, add these lines

   $ip = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']; $allowed = array('x.x.x.x','y.y.y.y');

2. Edit maintenance mode page Edit maintenance mode page in /errors/default/503.phtml Remove wrap in /errors/default/page.phtml

Hope this helps.