Walkthrough · Beginner · 5 minutes
How to Put WordPress in Maintenance Mode
How to screen off work in progress until it's actually ready for an audience, without the guessing — the steps in order, the snag ahead of time, and the tip our support team repeats daily.
The short answer
One line covers it: screen off work in progress until it's actually ready for an audience — a beginner-level job of roughly 5 minutes.
Below is the full run of steps, the error most people trip over, and the short cut worth remembering. On Hosting & Domains plans several steps are already automated away — the guide marks each one.
By the Hosting & Domains team · Reviewed 18 August 2026
Beginner
Experience required
5
Stages, start to finish
Free
Support included
Proven
On the platform itself
No prior knowledge assumed — a hosting account, a browser and 5 minutes of attention is the whole entry requirement. Every instruction runs on our platform exactly as printed, and carries over to any standard cPanel host.
First rule: read the snag section before you start, not afterwards. It was distilled from the tickets of everyone who tried the other order.
How the work divides up
The work falls into a few clean stages: match the tool to the length of the job, keep your own way in, return the right status code, keep the message short and take it down when the work ends.
Every stage is a few minutes of unhurried clicking — the total depends mostly on how well you already know the control panel. The detailed instructions are further down; read the whole path once before you begin.
Where it comes off, and how to stay on
Serving the holding page with a 200 status. Search engines read that as your real content and index the placeholder, which is the exact opposite of what a temporary state should say.
Forewarned is genuinely forearmed here. This one mistake accounts for most of the frustration the topic ever causes — and it disappears entirely once somebody points it out.
The habit that keeps this easy for good
Most small edits need no screen at all. WordPress applies changes cleanly enough that visitors almost never catch anything half-finished. Keep maintenance mode for rebuilds that genuinely take the site apart.
A minute spent now repays itself every time this job comes round again — and like almost every hosting job, come round it will.
The parts that look after themselves here
Some steps in this guide exist only because hosting traditionally forced them on you. Here the SSL issues itself, the copy is taken daily without being asked, and one-click installers remove the manual setup. What is left is the part that was always genuinely yours.
Stopped mid-guide at an awkward hour? That is exactly what round-the-clock support is for — say which step you are on and we take it from there.
Why this job is shorter on our plans
Tutorials written against imaginary hosting go stale fast. Ours are written against the real thing: the same panel, installer and defaults waiting in your account.
A free SSL certificate comes with every plan and reissues itself before the old one lapses — the padlock is never yours to diarise.
- Every step checked exactly as published
- The snag named before it arrives
- The dull steps taken out of your way
- People reachable at any hour you stall
Why Hosting & Domains
Standard on every plan
Honest about how big it is
Screen off work in progress until it's actually ready for an audience is a beginner-level job — set aside 5 minutes, with the platform-absorbed steps marked.
Help that keeps your hours, not ours
Stuck on step three at midnight? Support answers at any hour, mid-walkthrough included.
The dull parts automated
SSL, backups and installs look after themselves here, leaving the guide to cover only what is genuinely yours.
5 steps, nothing padded
Each stage is a few minutes of steady clicking, and the fiddly moments are labelled fiddly.
Jargon never charges you
Every term is defined on the spot or linked to the jargon buster — nothing assumes prior knowledge.
Works exactly as printed
Every step is proven on the platform we run — none of the 'your host may vary' hedging.
Quick Start
Order placed to site online
- 1
Match the tool to the length of the job
A maintenance plugin suits an afternoon's work. For a rebuild running over weeks, a proper coming-soon page that collects email addresses earns far more than a closed sign ever will.
- 2
Keep your own way in
Set it so signed-in administrators see the real site while everybody else gets the holding screen. You need to review the work as you go without lowering the barrier each time.
- 3
Return the right status code
The page should answer with a 503 and a retry hint. That tells search engines the state is temporary and worth coming back to, rather than inviting them to index the placeholder or write the site off.
- 4
Keep the message short
A logo, one sentence, and a way to make contact or sign up. A maintenance screen is a brief notice rather than a letter of apology, and nobody reads past the second line anyway.
- 5
Take it down when the work ends
Maintenance mode still running after the job is done is downtime you have chosen to give yourself. Set the reminder at the same moment you switch it on and the problem never arises.
Built In
Fitted to every plan
- Money back within 30 days on hosting plans, 7 on reseller
- No set-up charge at any point, and no joining fee
- cPanel, which is what most of the industry already runs
- Webmail in the browser plus IMAP, POP and SMTP for any client
- Mailboxes that answer at the name you hold
- Your existing site brought across by our engineers, at no charge
- Free SSL on every plan, reissued before the old one lapses
- WordPress and 400+ further applications installed in one click
- Upgrades applied in place, with no migration when you change plan
- LiteSpeed caching in the server itself rather than bolted on by plugin
Frequently Asked
The questions that come up most
Will maintenance mode cost me search position?
For a few hours behind a correct 503, no, because crawlers read it as exactly the temporary state it declares. Once it stretches into days or weeks, move to a real indexable coming-soon page instead of a long-running closed notice.
An update has left the site stuck in maintenance mode — now what?
The update died partway and left a .maintenance flag file in the site root. Delete that file in File Manager and the site returns at once; then run the interrupted update again from the dashboard.
How do payments and auto-renewal work?
You pay by credit or debit card through a secure checkout, and renewals bill at the same rate as the original order. Every invoice sits in your client area, and auto-renewal switches off with a toggle in the account — no telephone call needed.
What does round-the-clock support actually cover?
A reply from a person at any hour, covering the practical jobs: setting up a mailbox, a DNS record, a WordPress fault, a restore. Not 'server is up, closing ticket'. Put a hard question to us before you buy — the answer is a fair sample of what follows.
Keep reading
How to Add an Addon Domain
Host a second site on the same account while keeping the pair cleanly separated — beginner level, about 10 minutes.
How to Set Up a Catch-All Address
Work out whether catching mistyped addresses is worth what it costs, then set it up safely — intermediate level, about 30 minutes.
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