WordPress Maintenance Mode | A Complete Guide

Maintenance Today can go a Long Way Tomorrow

A website without any updates, fixes, or anything that comes under the umbrella of maintenance, will become troublesome after some time which will cause all your marketing efforts to go down the drain. A WordPress site needs maintenance and routine updates to enable you to boost performance, battle online security infringers, make your site speedy and easy-to-navigate for end-users.

Generally, a WordPress maintenance mode is a kind of state where you carry out fixing of a site. These are the times when you’ve to make your website fully inaccessible to visitors, therefore, at this stage, it is WordPress maintenance mode that hogs the limelight.

If you’re overwhelmingly occupied with whats, hows, and whys about WordPress maintenance mode; just bear with us and we’re going to reveal about maintenance mode for WordPress site in detail here. Let us start by introducing WordPress maintenance mode.

WordPress Maintenance Mode | An Introduction

Like we said earlier, “WordPress maintenance mode” is like a state where you put your WordPress site for fixing and updating. During the WordPress maintenance mode signs such as ‘Back in Five-minutes’ ‘Be back shortly’ or ‘We’ll be back soon!’ or ‘Temporarily Closed’ are seen by the visitors of the website. It is like asking the visitors to hold on because a website is under maintenance.

WordPress Maintenance Mode | When to Use?

There are subtle nuances that you should understand before implementing WordPress maintenance mode. For example, for minor site tweaks such as adding new pages, installing plugins or uploading content, you don’t need to activate maintenance mode specifically.

WordPress maintenance mode is well-suited for important tasks such as changing themes, implementing new features, upgrading plugins, or even migrating a WordPress site to a new domain. More specifically, it comes handy for WordPress sites without a staging site where you could test new changes.

WordPress Maintenance Mode | What can Go Wrong?

One of things that can go wrong with a WordPress site is that it can get stuck in maintenance mode even after the completion of update or fixing which makes it completely inaccessible for visitors and search engines i.e., Google, for an unannounced time. This is totally devastating for a WordPress website owner, it is more destructive than a website de-indexing by and large.

It takes place as a result of the following things:

  • If you close a browser even before a completion of an update
  • If you try to update many or all plugins in one-go
  • If a compatibility issue happens meanwhile update is in process

Fixing the Errors:

Log into your WordPress site through FTP (File Transfer Protocol) program to locate and delete (.maintenance) files in a root folder of your website.

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In case, deleting the file doesn’t seem to resolve the issue, you will have to apply the last update you’ve used previously so that you could make the update successful.

WordPress Maintenance Mode | What’s its Impact on Marketing?

Running a marketing campaign while your WordPress site is in maintenance mode is like burning Rome overnight that was built in years. You need to be super-careful while putting your site into a maintenance mode because carelessness can lead to waste of digital marketing budget and poor user experience. Therefore, all stakeholders should collaborate to weave off technical glitches and errors from recurring.

A marketing team need to do the following things:

  • Digital marketing and production department should strategize collaboratively to safeguard visibility and identity of a site while undergoing WordPress maintenance mode
  • Stop displaying ads that redirect your customers to the WordPress site under maintenance mode to save budget
  • To answer the queries of prospects or to keep the lead-generation process active; you can use social media platforms i.e., Facebook or LinkedIn to cater the needs of customers while your WordPress site is in maintenance mode temporarily.
  • You should ensure that 503 status (Service Unavailable) has been implemented and passed on to Google

WordPress Maintenance Mode | Which Plugins to Choose?

We are going to discuss a couple of plugins to ensure flawless, quick and purpose-driven maintenance mode for WordPress sites. Install once and carry out maintenance mode in style as per your requirements. Here, we are talking about two plugins for this purpose:

  1. WP Maintenance Mode
  2. SeedProd
More details are given below:

1. WP Maintenance Mode

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WP Maintenance Mode is one of the most installed plugins for implementing maintenance mode. Until now, it has been installed over 800K times. This plugin is available in 29 languages to cater the needs of a wider audience across the globe. In essence, it’s easy to use and activate.

Want to put a landing page in maintenance mode but don’t want to disappoint your visitors? This plugin has tons of a maintenance page which you can use on your blog letting website visitors know that the respective site/page is under the maintenance.

This plugin enables its users to add a countdown timer with a subscription box for newsletter, redirection logos for social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, etc. WP Maintenance mode has simple, soothing and effective maintenance mode templates to inform your audience about the availability of your site in maintenance mode.

2. SeedProd

SeedProd is a 5-Star rated plugin for WordPress maintenance mode. It has been used by over 1 million users across the globe. You’re going to love this plugin because it is easily compatible with any WordPress theme. Like WP Maintenance Mode, it can create stylish landing pages, 404 pages, and maintenance mode pages or a Coming Soon page (for new sites) in style.

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You can install SeedProd easily through the WordPress dashboard.

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Firstly click on the Plugins icon available on your dashboard and now press on ‘Add New’. In the search tab, type ‘SeedProd’ and click on ‘Install now’ and follow the prompts given below to install the plugin.

Final Words - WordPress Maintenance Mode Is Important

WordPress maintenance is not a one-time job. It is a constant practice. A WordPress website owner always needs maintenance of the site to fix broken links, update a plugin and she has to keep a WordPress site in first-class condition to avert technical glitches for best performance and functionality.

That’s why we have covered every aspect of WordPress maintenance mode from why it is inevitable to its impact on marketing. Plus, it is always a good idea to get professional WordPress Maintenance Support by WP-Bridge where experts are always available 24/7 to help you keep your WordPress site’s maintenance in check.

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