Maintenance Mode

Put your site into maintenance mode with a fully customizable page — styled gradients, countdown timer, bypass roles, and a live preview.

Maintenance Mode displays a branded holding page to visitors while you work on your site. Administrators always see the site normally. Settings and the toggle are independent — you can save your design without activating maintenance, or activate it instantly with the current settings.

Status banner

The top of the page shows whether maintenance is currently Active or Inactive. When active, an amber banner reminds you that regular visitors cannot access your content. Click Enable or Disable to toggle the mode at any time.

While maintenance mode is active, all visitors who are not administrators (or in a configured bypass role) receive a 503 Service Unavailable response with a Retry-After: 3600 header.

Settings tabs

Settings are organised into three tabs. Changes in any tab update the live preview pane on the right in real time.

Content

• Page Title — the heading displayed on the maintenance page (default: “Site Under Maintenance”).
• Message — the body text beneath the title.
• Show Badge — toggle a small status pill at the top of the page. When enabled, a Badge Text field appears (max 30 characters).
• Expected End Time — an optional date/time field. When the countdown timer is off, this is informational only and can be referenced in your message text.

Appearance

Gradient presets — six one-click presets apply a background gradient and matching accent colour:

Preset	Start colour	End colour	Accent
Midnight	#1e1e2e	#0f3460	#4f8ef7
Sunset	#ff6b6b	#ffa500	#fff
Forest	#1a3a2a	#2d6a4f	#95d5b2
Royal	#2d1b69	#11998e	#c9b1ff
Slate	#1e293b	#334155	#94a3b8
Candy	#833ab4	#fd1d1d	#fcb045

Custom colours — override any of the four colour values individually using colour pickers or hex inputs:

• Background Start — left colour of the gradient.
• Background End — right colour of the gradient.
• Accent / Divider — the thin coloured bar under the title and countdown tile text.
• Text Color — all text on the maintenance page.

Page Icon — choose one of eight emoji presets (⚙️ 🔧 🚀 🛠️ ⚡ 🌙 🔒 🎯) or type any emoji into the custom input field. The icon floats with a subtle animation on the live page.

Access & Extras

Countdown timer — toggle Show Countdown Timer to display a live days/hours/minutes/seconds counter on the maintenance page. Set the Countdown End Time to the target date and time. The preview pane ticks in real time.

Bypass roles — logged-in users with the selected roles can view the full site during maintenance. Administrators always bypass regardless of this setting.

Maintenance scope — choose which pages show the maintenance screen:

• Whole Site — all frontend pages.
• Home Page Only — only the front page and blog index.
• Specific Paths — enter URL path patterns (one per line). Wildcards are supported: /shop/* matches all shop pages.

Show Toggle in Admin Bar — adds a maintenance on/off switch to the WordPress admin bar for quick access.

Secret Bypass URL — generate a secret key and share the URL /?wmp_preview=<key> with clients or team members. Visiting the URL sets a 7-day cookie, granting access to the full site during maintenance without needing to log in. Click the refresh icon to auto-generate a random 16-character key.

Live preview

The preview pane on the right updates instantly as you adjust any setting. The countdown tiles tick in real time if you have a countdown end time set. The preview is a faithful render of the actual maintenance page output.

Save settings vs. toggle

The Save Settings button at the bottom of the settings card persists your design changes without activating or deactivating maintenance mode. The Enable / Disable button in the status banner toggles the mode and also saves the current settings at the same time.

This means you can design your maintenance page in advance, save it, and enable it later with a single click.

How the maintenance page is generated

When a visitor hits the site while maintenance is active, the plugin intercepts the request on the template_redirect hook (frontend only — the REST API and wp-admin are never blocked). It sends a 503 Service Unavailable response and outputs a standalone HTML document with fully inline CSS. No theme files, no WordPress templates, and no external stylesheets are loaded.

The page includes:

• A CSS linear-gradient background using your configured colours.
• The floating emoji icon.
• The accent divider bar.
• The title and message.
• Optional countdown tiles driven by a small inline <script> tag.
• Optional status badge.

The maintenance state is stored as a WordPress option (wmp_maintenance_active). It is automatically removed when the plugin is deactivated, so your site returns to normal if you deactivate WP Manager Pro.

Setting up a maintenance page with countdown timer

1. Configure your content

   Open Maintenance Mode and click the Content tab. Enter a Page Title and Message that explain the situation to visitors.

2. Choose an appearance

   Click the Appearance tab. Click one of the six gradient presets, or use the colour pickers to set custom colours. Select an emoji icon for the page.

3. Enable the countdown

   Click the Access & Extras tab. Toggle Show Countdown Timer on, then set the Countdown End Time to your expected completion date and time. Watch the countdown tiles appear in the preview.

4. Save your settings

   Click Save Settings to persist the design without activating maintenance yet.

5. Activate maintenance mode

   When you are ready, click Enable in the status banner. The site immediately shows the maintenance page to all non-administrator visitors.

6. Disable when done

   Click Disable in the status banner when your work is complete. The site returns to normal instantly.

Use the Secret Bypass URL to let a client review the live site during maintenance. Generate a key in the Access & Extras tab, copy the bypass URL, and share it. They can browse the site normally for 7 days without logging in.