Maintenance Mode

By Michael Wohrer (http://sw-guide.de/)

• Why it's awesome: Quick and easy way to turn off access to your blog, except for your blog administrators

• Manual Install URL: http://Word Press.org/extend/plugins/maintenance-mode/

• Automatic Install search term: Maintenance Mode

• Geek level: Newbie

• Configuration location: Settings | Maintenance Mode

• Used in: Site-wide

At some point in your WordPress career, you'll need to take your website down for maintenance. Maintenance Mode makes the experience of down time a little less annoying for the user. Once enabled, all users (minus administrators) will be shown a pretty little "Maintenance Mode" notice that can be 100 percent customized.

Customizing the maintenance notice

The default notice is good enough for most personal blogs. However, if you want to spice things up, visit Settings | Maintenance Mode.

The message text field supports both HTML and CSS. You can also include [blogurl], [blogtitle], and [backtime]; each will be replaced...