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Keep working on your site while visitors see a friendly “back soon” page. Maintenance mode hides your real site from visitors, and you and your team keep working on it. A new site starts in maintenance mode, so nobody sees it before it’s ready. Who can do this: Admins and Owners.

Open Maintenance

  • In the toolbar (the bar across the top of your site once you’re signed in; see The toolbar), choose Site settings (the gear), then the Maintenance tab.
  • Or open the command palette (⌘K, or Ctrl+K on Windows), choose Site settings, then Maintenance. The shortcut for Site settings is T then G (press T, let go, then press G, while you’re not typing in a box; see Keyboard shortcuts).
Site settings open on the Maintenance tab: Maintenance mode on, Expected downtime set to 4 hours, and a Visitor message filled in.Site settings open on the Maintenance tab: Maintenance mode on, Expected downtime set to 4 hours, and a Visitor message filled in.

The Maintenance tab.

Maintenance settings

  • Maintenance mode: turn it on to take your site offline for visitors. They see a maintenance page instead. A new site starts with this on.
  • Expected downtime: how long search engines should wait before they check back. Choose from 1 hour (the default) up to 1 week. A rough guess is fine. Nothing switches back on its own.
  • Visitor message: optional. A short note on the maintenance page, such as what’s happening or when you’ll be back. Leave it empty for a general “back shortly” line.
The last two appear only while Maintenance mode is on. Choose Update to put your change live.

What visitors see

Every page on your site shows the maintenance page. It’s in your colors and shows:
  • your business name and browser icon,
  • the headline “We’ll be back soon.”,
  • your Visitor message, or a general line if you left it empty,
  • buttons with your email and phone, from Brand.
Parker's maintenance page as a visitor sees it: the business name at the top, "Scheduled maintenance", the "We'll be back soon." headline, the visitor message.Parker's maintenance page as a visitor sees it: the business name at the top, "Scheduled maintenance", the "We'll be back soon." headline, the visitor message.

What visitors see while maintenance mode is on.

Search engines are told the site is down for a short while, so your place in search results is kept.

What you see

Signed-in Contributors, Editors, Admins and Owners keep the full site and work as usual. Editors, Admins and Owners edit and publish; Contributors edit and submit their changes for review. A signed-in Viewer sees the maintenance page, like a visitor. A reminder bar stays at the bottom of the screen on every page: “Maintenance mode is on — visitors currently see the maintenance page. Turn it off in Site settings → Maintenance.”
Parker's home page signed in, with the maintenance reminder bar ringed.Parker's home page signed in, with the maintenance reminder bar ringed.

Signed in, you see the real site and a reminder.

Go live

When your site is ready, turn Maintenance mode off and choose Update. Visitors see your real site straight away. It’s also the last step of Set up your site: Go live. See Set up your site.

Good to know

  • Check it as a visitor. You won’t see the maintenance page while you’re signed in as a Contributor or above. Open your site in a private window (Incognito in Chrome), which isn’t signed in, to see what visitors see.
  • Use it for big changes. Turn it on while you rebuild a large part of your site, then off again when you’re done.
  • Your email and phone help visitors. Fill them in on Brand so visitors can still reach you.

Set up your site

the checklist that takes a new site live.

Brand

the name, icon and contact details on the maintenance page.

Publish and schedule

put your pages live.

Site settings

every tab on this screen.